Lawmakers press Trump on relief bill, as jobless aid expires

President Donald Trump appeared no closer to signing an end-of-year COVID-19 relief and spending bill today, as millions lost unemployment aid, the government barrelled toward a mid-pandemic shutdown, and lawmakers implored him to act.

Trump blindsided members of both parties and upended months of negotiations when he demanded last week that the package — already passed the House and Senate by large margins and believed to have Trump’s support — be revised to include larger relief cheques and scaled-back spending.

If he continues his opposition, the federal government will run out of money at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, while he spends the holidays golfing in Florida.

In the face of growing economic hardship and spreading disease, lawmakers urged Trump today to sign the legislation immediately, then have Congress follow up with additional aid. Aside from unemployment benefits and relief payments to families, money for vaccine distribution, businesses, cash-starved public transit systems and more is on the line. Protections against evictions also hang in the balance.

“What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. “So many people are hurting. ... It is really insane and this president has got to finally ... do the right thing for the American people and stop worrying about his ego.”

Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he understood that Trump “wants to be remembered for advocating for big cheques, but the danger is he’ll be remembered for chaos and misery and erratic behaviour, if he allows this to expire.”

Toomey added: “So I think the best thing to do, as I said, sign this and then make the case for subsequent legislation.”

The same point was echoed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who’s criticised Trump’s pandemic response and his efforts to undo the election results. “I just gave up guessing what he might do next,” he said.

Old 'switcheroo game'

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said too much is at stake for Trump to “play this old switcheroo game.”

“I don’t get the point,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s being done, why, unless it’s just to create chaos and show power and be upset because you lost the election.”

Trump, who spent much of today at his West Palm Beach golf course, has given no indication that he plans to sign the bill, as he spends the last days of his presidency in a rage. Indeed, his dissatisfaction with the legislation seems only to have grown in recent days as he has criticised it both privately to club members and publicly on Twitter.

Days ago, Democrats said they would call House lawmakers back to Washington for a vote Monday on Trump’s proposal to send out $2,000 relief cheques, instead of the $600 approved by congress. But the idea is likely to die in the Republican-controlled senate, as it did among Republicans in the house during a rare Christmas Eve session. Democrats were also considering a vote Monday on a stopgap measure aimed at keeping the government running until President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated January 20.

Washington has been reeling since Trump turned on the deal, without warning, after it had won sweeping approval in both houses of congress and after the White House had assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.

Instead, he assailed the bill’s plan to provide $600 COVID-19 relief cheques to most Americans — insisting it should be $2,000 — and took issue with spending included in an attached $1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government operating through September.

And already, his opposition has had consequences, as two federal programmes providing unemployment aid expired yesterday.

Millions could lose benefits

Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution had calculated that at least 11 million people would lose aid immediately as a result of Trump’s failure to sign the legislation; millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits within weeks.

How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state they live in, the programme they are relying on, and when they applied for benefits.

In some states, people on regular unemployment insurance will continue to receive payments under a programme that extends benefits when the jobless rate surpassed a certain threshold, said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank.

About 9.5 million people, however, had been relying on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance programme that expired altogether yesterday. That programme made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, gig workers and others normally not eligible. After receiving their last checks, those recipients will not be able to file for more aid, Stettner said.

Fingers have been pointing at administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, as lawmakers try to understand whether they were misled about Trump’s position.

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