US House approves higher Covid-19 aid cheques

WASHINGTON • The Democrat-led US House of Representatives has voted 275-134 to meet President Donald Trump's demand for US$2,000 (S$2,650) Covid-19 relief cheques, sending the measure on to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Mr Trump last week threatened to block a massive pandemic aid and spending package if Congress did not boost stimulus payments from US$600 to US$2,000 and cut other spending. He later backed down from his demands as a possible government shutdown loomed.

But Democratic lawmakers have long wanted much bigger relief cheques and used the rare point of agreement with Mr Trump to advance the proposal in the vote on Monday.

The 275 votes for passage meant the stimulus proposal narrowly exceeded the two-thirds of votes cast needed. A total of 130 Republicans, two independents and two Democrats opposed it.

Mr Trump finally signed the US$2.3 trillion package into law on Sunday after holding it up with a veiled veto threat. But he continued demanding US$2,000 cheques. The US$2.3 trillion includes US$1.4 trillion in spending to fund government agencies and US$892 billion in Covid-19 relief.

It is not clear how the measure to increase aid cheques will fare in the Senate, where Republicans have said the higher amount will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the relief Bill. The Senate was due to convene yesterday.

The US$2,000 payments will go to individual adults with an adjusted gross income of up to US$75,000 a year based on 2019 earnings. Heads of households who earn up to US$112,500 and a couple (or someone whose spouse died in 2020) who make up to US$150,000 a year would get twice that amount.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to widespread economic hardship in the United States, with millions of families relying on unemployment benefits.

Mr Trump's approval of the stimulus package will keep the listing US economy afloat, but help for those most in need might not come right away.

The delay in signing it into law means two welfare programmes briefly expired on Dec 26, and states may take weeks to restart payments. The hold-up might have cost unemployed people a week of benefits, and could lead to a gap stretching as long as three weeks in which the jobless will not get paid.

"I've been running with zero income for the past couple of weeks. Anytime that you don't have income hurts," said Arizona resident Carson Noel, 51, who has not been able to work in the live events industry since the pandemic struck.

Unemployment aid in the US is administered by individual states and territories, and many systems are overwhelmed and reliant on badly outdated technology that may not be able to easily reactivate a benefit programme that had just been deactivated.

"The fact that they have to roll everybody off and they have to roll everybody back on, it's not going to go smoothly in any circumstances," said Mr Andrew Stettner of The Century Foundation think-tank, which estimated 12 million people were depending on these programmes that would have lapsed had the new stimulus Bill not been passed.

Phlebotomist Deborah Lee, 58, whose diabetes meant she had to leave a job at a hospital where she feared contracting Covid-19, has been trying to keep her family afloat on the US$240 per week that Arizona pays in unemployment benefits - one of the lowest amounts in the country, which she says is "impossible" to live on.

Ms Lee has already drawn on her retirement savings, and worries what a gap in benefits might do to her already strapped household where only her daughter works, while her three grandchildren attend online school.

"It scares me to think about it. I still have a car payment, I still have auto insurance that has to be paid. It's just kind of taking it day by day," she said.

REUTERS, NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE