Huffman touts COVID-19 relief bill

Ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate vote on the American Rescue Plan, a bill that includes $1,400 stimulus checks for low-income Americans, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D-san Rafael) joined fellow House colleagues in a conference to urge the U.S. Senate to approve the legislation.

The House of Representatives approved the $1.9-trillion bill on Saturday morning, passing the proposal on to the Senate.

The conference, hosted by California congressman Ted Lieu, also included John Garamendi and Suzanne Bonamici, all of whom spoke in favor of approving the legislation. Huffman noted the work that went into passing the American Rescue Plan and stated his district has been hard hit during the pandemic period.

“Like other communities around the country, our economy is driven in large part by tourism, travel, and recreation. These industries have obviously been hammered by the pandemic and wishing the pandemic away was never going to revive that part of our economy,” Huffman said.

Huffman pointed to the areas covered by the bill, which include provisions to bring more vaccines to the public, return people to their jobs and children to schools.

“Our highest needs and priorities are all met by this bill. Making sure we can safely reopen schools, getting tens of millions of people vaccinated quickly to crush the pandemic and providing that economic lifeline for millions of families out there people who are out of work, on the verge of eviction and foreclosure struggling to put food on the table,” Huffman stated.

“The people we serve have waited too long for this relief already. Asking Republican colleagues and Republicans in the Senate to join us should not be controversial if our job is serving the people.”

During the conference, Bonamici took a question from the Portland Tribune related to the Senate parliamentarian’s removal of the minimum wage raise clause from the bill. The clause called for the federal minimum wage to be raised up to $15.

Bonamici pointed to the benefits of the higher minimum wage and echoed Huffman’s calls for Republican support to adopt the bill.

“As Rep. Huffman has been saying, we need to pass the American Rescue Plan as soon as possible, people are out there still struggling,” she said.

The Senate did not vote ahead of the Times-standard’s publishing deadline on Tuesday.