(Reuters) – When the U.S. Congress passed a pandemic relief bill Monday, Meghan Meyer, a single mother from Lincoln, Nebraska, thought she would get a break from the daily struggle to feed and house her two children during a period of unprecedented health and economy. crisis.
But the next day, President Donald Trump declared the long-awaited relief package a “disgrace” and said he would not sign it into law, denouncing some of his spending measures, while also demanding that it include greater stimulus for most Americans.
The weekend had refused to move.
This leaves Meyer, who has been on unpaid medical leave for his customer service work at retailer TJ Maxx since May, as he runs the risk of a serious COVID, facing the edge of the cliff. financial. It is one of approximately 14 million Americans whose emergency unemployment benefits, introduced by Congress when the pandemic struck in March, ended Saturday.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Meyer, 39, told Reuters in a telephone interview. By 2020, Meyer said he needed to rely on friends and charities to help put food on the table, pay him rent, cover the family dog’s medical expenses, and buy Christmas presents for the family. their children.
“I’ve held on and held on,” he said.
The new aid bill would be extended through mid-March programs that support self-employed and unemployed workers for more than half a year. It also gives an additional $ 300 a week through mid-March to all those receiving unemployment benefits, about 20.3 million people. And it is extending until January a moratorium on evictions that will expire on Dec. 31 and provide $ 25 billion in emergency rental aid.
Many economists agree that aid is insufficient and that more will be needed after Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20th. Biden described the bill as a “down payment.”
Negotiated by Trump’s own Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, and by Republican Party congressional leaders, the bill has been moved to the Florida president’s resort, where he is staying on vacation, awaiting his possible signature. On Saturday, in tweets, Trump noted that he was not yet ready to sign the bill, despite requests from lawmakers to show goodwill for Christmas.
“I just want to win our big people $ 2,000, instead of the miserable $ 600,” he tweeted Saturday, referring to the bill’s stimulus controls, while also continuing to talk about the November election. while making unfounded claims about election fraud.
Trump had not criticized the terms of the aid package before he went on to vote in the House of Representatives and Senate.
As pandemic closures hit the economy in March, Congress rushed to obtain emergency unemployment benefits as part of the $ 2 trillion CARES Act. At the time, lawmakers did not anticipate that aid would be needed beyond Christmas, and until last weekend, they were unable to reach an agreement to extend the benefits.
Meyer, like others, has seen his benefits dwindle over the past six months after a CARES program that gave him $ 600 a week in additional jobless payments expired in July and continued to deplete his unemployment benefits. pandemic emergency.
That left him with extended benefits of just $ 154 a week until Saturday, which would increase to $ 454 if Trump relented and signed the bill. If he doesn’t, Meyer won’t get anything.
“It’s the difference between whether we have enough groceries or not, whether I can pay for my car insurance, whether I can have gas to go to a food bank,” he said.
Meyer said she voted for Trump in 2016, but was quickly turned down for her behavior in office and described her opposition to the relief package as “grumpy.”
“CLICK” TO GROWTH
Employment growth in the United States has slowed after an initial rebound when orders were withdrawn at home over the summer and a new wave of coronavirus infections now threatens to hurt the recovery.
Andrew Stettner, a senior member of the non-partisan think tank The Century Foundation, said slowing relief will slow recovery even if most Americans are vaccinated and life returns to normal in 2021.
“If you don’t have that money circulating in the economy, things will run out,” Stettner said.
Like Meyer, most people who are no longer eligible for federal unemployment benefits will run out of income, as most states offer little assistance, he said.
Approximately 9 million Americans who would not normally be able to obtain unemployment insurance, including the self-employed and workers, received Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) until it expired along with other CARES programs on Saturday, dir Stettner.
Among them is 54-year-old artist Marji Rawson from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who on a normal year would run a stand at art festivals across the country. These festivals may not return until June, but Rawson as of Saturday will lose about $ 150 a week in PUA with which he has relied throughout the pandemic.
“As if this world is no longer full of anxiety, we now have it upon us,” Rawson said.
Simon Lewis Reports; Edited by Mary Milliken, Michelle Price and Leslie Adler