Trump signs coronavirus bill ordering free testing and aid for workers
Donald Trump has approved legislation that will expand Medicaid and unemployment benefits, mandate paid sick leave and childcare leave for certain employees, and order free coronavirus testing, in an effort to to limit the damage from the pandemic.
The bill, introduced by House Democrats, faced criticism from Senate Republicans. But it ultimately passed 90-8 after the White House lobbied for quick action over prolonged arguments over amendments.
The legislation, signed by the president on Wednesday, will deploy an estimated $100bn in aid. The Senate is also negotiating another bill worth up to $1tn or more to bolster the economy.
“This is a time for urgent bipartisan action, and in this case, I do not believe we should let perfection be the enemy of something that will help even a subset of workers,” said the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Wednesday morning, as he signaled next steps. “Just how long it will take to get through these steps is unclear, but as everyone knows we are moving rapidly because the situation demands it,” he said.
The legislation underwent a few major changes before passage. Though the law will mandate paid leave for those who are sick or quarantined because of Covid-19, as well as for caregivers of those who are sick, businesses with more than 500 and fewer than 50 employees are exempt. Health providers, including hospitals and nursing homes, are exempt as well. Moreover, there are no stipulations for America’s 16 million workers who are self-employed.
Parents facing school closures will be eligible for paid leave, and all the provisions will last through the end of the year.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said she is pushing to expand paid leave in the next funding package.
The bill’s passage came as two members of Congress revealed that they have tested positive for coronavirus. Representatives Ben McAdams, 45, and Mario Diaz-Balart, 58, both announced their diagnoses on Wednesday.
“My symptoms got worse and I developed a fever, a dry cough and labored breathing and I remained selfquarantined,” McAdams, a Democrat of Utah, said in a statement. “On Tuesday, my doctor instructed me to get tested for Covid-19 and following his referral, I went to the local testing clinic for the test.”
Both McAdams and Diaz-Balart, a Republican of Florida, said they had self-quarantined after noticing symptoms.
As the public health crisis escalated across the country, with more and more counties and cities asking Americans to stay home and mandating that schools, restaurants and public spaces remain closed to slow the spread of disease, Trump cast himself as a “wartime president”.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump invoked the 70-year-old Defense Production
Act, to give the government more power to steer production by private companies to alleviate shortages of masks, ventilators and other medical supplies.
But the president later caused confusion by tweeting that he “only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst-case scenario in the future”.
Insisting on using a racist term for the virus that causes Covid-19, Trump’s messaging throughout the day was muddled. Shortly after announcing that he had signed the legislation guaranteeing paid leave, he put out a statement announcing that he would disregard one sub-section of the bill.
Trump took issue with a paragraph that “purports to require the Secretary of Agriculture, upon certain events, to submit a report to the Congress”. The president has “the exclusive authority” to make recommendations to Congress, he said.
The administration has pushed forward a broad economic rescue plan, which proposes sending checks to millions of Americans by next month. As the economy plunged deeper into uncertainty, the president dismissed his treasury secretary’s estimate that the nation could face 20% unemployment.
“We will win,” Trump said during a briefing with nurses and healthcare providers. “And I think it’s going – it’s going to go quickly. We hope it’s going to go quickly.”