WASHINGTON (AP) – Congressional major lawmakers reached an agreement late at night on the latest major obstacle to a COVID-19 economic aid package costing nearly $ 1 trillion and paving the way for votes on Sunday.
A Democratic aide said in an email that an agreement had been reached late on Saturday and that a compromise was being reached to seal a deal to be unveiled on Sunday.
The breakthrough involved a battle for the Federal Reserve’s emergency powers defused by a strange bunch: the senate’s top Democrat and a high-ranking conservative Republican.
“We’re getting very close, very close,” said minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., earlier Saturday as he spent much of the day going back and forth with Pennsylvania GOP Senator Pat Toomey. Toomey had pushed for a provision to close the Fed’s credit facilities that the Democrats and White House said was too broadly worded and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden government.
COVID-19 legislation has stalled after months of dysfunction, attitude and bad faith, but talks got serious in December when lawmakers on both sides finally had the deadline to act before leaving Washington for Christmas.
The law would introduce a temporary supplemental unemployment benefit of $ 300 a week and $ 600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans, according to lawmakers and aides, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and funding for schools, health care providers, and tenants. facing eviction.
Schumer said he hoped both the House and Senate would vote on the measure on Sunday. That would require more cooperation than the Senate can usually muster, but a government closing deadline loomed at midnight on Sunday and all parties were eager to leave for Christmas.
Toomey defended his controversial provision in a speech, saying the emergency powers were meant to stabilize capital markets at the height of the COVID panic this spring and yet ended at the end of the month. The language he had sought would prevent the Biden administration from rebooting them.
Toomey has a stubborn streak and Democrats also held their own, but both sides saw the need for a compromise to pave the way for the over $ 900 billion COVID-19 measure, which was linked to a $ 1 government spending bill , 4 trillion. and a host of other bills containing much of Capitol Hill’s remaining Trump-era legislative output.
These were emergency programs launched by the Fed during the pandemic this spring, which provided loans to small and medium-sized companies and bought government bonds and local government bonds. Those bond purchases made it easier for those governments to borrow, at a time when their finances were strained from job losses and health costs from the pandemic.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last month that those programs, along with two that bought corporate bonds, would shut down at the end of the year, prompting an initial objection from the Fed. Under the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act passed after the Great Recession, the Fed can only set up emergency programs with the support of the Treasury Secretary.
Democrats in Congress also said Toomey was trying to curtail the Fed’s ability to boost the economy, just as Biden was preparing to take office.
“This is about existing authorities that the Fed has had for a long time to use in an emergency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “It’s about a lending authority to help small businesses, the state government, local government in the midst of a crisis.”
Toomey disputed that charge, saying his proposal “is emphatically not a general overhaul of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending agency.”
The massive package would pack much of Capitol Hill’s unfinished 2020 business into a take-it-or-leave-it measure that promised to be a foot thick or more. House lawmakers would probably only have a few hours to study it before voting on Sunday night.
A vote in the Senate would follow, possibly on Monday. Another short-term financing account would be needed to avoid the impending deadline – otherwise, a partial shutdown of non-essential agencies would begin Monday.
The $ 900 billion package ended when the pandemic triggered its most terrifying wave to date, killing more than 3,000 victims a day and straining the health care system. While vaccines were on the way, most people wouldn’t get them for months. The number of applications for unemployment increased.
The emerging deal would bring in more than $ 300 billion in aid to businesses, as well as the additional $ 300 a week for unemployment and renewal of state benefits that would otherwise expire immediately after Christmas. It included $ 600 direct payments to individuals; funds for the distribution of vaccines; and money for tenants, schools, the postal service and people in need of food aid.
It would be the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the historic CARES law was passed almost unanimously in March, bringing in $ 1.8 trillion in aid, more generous bonus payments of $ 600 a week and $ 1,200 direct payments to individuals.
The government credit bill would fund the agencies until September next year. That measure would likely provide a final $ 1.4 billion installment to President Donald Trump’s border wall between the US and Mexico as a condition of getting his signature.