WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) – Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet have expired overnight as President Donald Trump refused to sign a relief bill and year-end COVID expenses that had been considered an agreement before sudden objections.
The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo on Sunday, as Trump continued to demand greater relief controls from COVID and complained about “pork” spending. Without the widespread funding provided by the massive measure, there would be a government shutdown when the money ran out at 12:01 p.m.
“It’s a game of chess and we’re pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who loses her $ 129 weekly unemployment benefit unless Trump signs the package in the law or succeed in your investment seeking change.
Washington has been shaken since Trump launched the package after he had already garnered general approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support him.
Instead, he has attacked the bill’s plan to provide $ 600 COVID relief checks to most Americans, insisting it should be $ 2,000. House Republicans quickly rejected the idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump has not let himself be influenced.
“I just want to get our big people $ 2,000, instead of the miserable $ 600 that’s on the bill now,” Trump tweeted Saturday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he spends the holidays. “Plus, you’re stopping the billions of dollars in ‘pork.'”
President-elect Joe Biden called on Trump to sign the bill immediately, as the two federal programs that provide unemployment benefits would expire Saturday.
“It’s the day after Christmas and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to reach two because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign a congressional-approved economic aid bill with an overwhelming, bipartisan majority,” he said. Biden said in a statement. He accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibilities” that has “devastating consequences.”
“I’ve been talking to people who are afraid of being evicted from their homes over the Christmas holidays, and it still can be if we don’t sign this bill,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.
Lauren Bauer, an economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, has estimated that 11 million people would lose program aid immediately without additional relief; millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits in a few weeks.
Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior researcher at the Century Foundation think tank, said the figure may be closer to 14 million because unemployment has risen since Thanksgiving.
“All of these people and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Liberal Institute of Economic Policy, said on Twitter on Wednesday.
How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state they live in, the program they trust, and when they applied for benefits. In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance could continue to receive payments under a program that expands benefits when the unemployment rate exceeds a certain threshold, Stettner said.
However, some 9.5 million people rely on the pandemic unemployment assistance program, which expires completely on Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to the self-employed, concert workers, and others who are not normally eligible. After receiving the final checks, those recipients will not be able to apply for more help after Saturday, Stettner said.
While payments could be received retroactively, any loophole means more hardship and uncertainty for Americans already facing bureaucratic delays, often depleting much of their savings to stay afloat while they wait for payments begin.
They are people like Earl McCarthy, a father of four who lives in South Fulton, Georgia, and has been relying on unemployment since he lost his job as a sales representative for a luxury community for seniors. He said he will not run out of revenue in the second week of January if Trump does not sign the bill.
McCarthy said he had already burned much of his savings while waiting five months to start receiving his unemployment benefits. After leaving weekly messages to the unemployment agency, McCarthy contacted the mayor of South Fulton and then his state legislative representative to ask for help. He finally started receiving payments in November.
“The whole experience was horrible,” said McCarthy, who receives about $ 350 a week in unemployment insurance.
“For me, it makes me shudder to think if I hadn’t saved anything or had an emergency fund during those five months, where would we have been?” He said. “It will be difficult if the president does not sign this bill.”
The bill awaiting Trump’s signing would also activate a $ 300 weekly federal supplement to unemployment payments.
Sharon Shelton Corpening hoped the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop making her Social Security payments to make the $ 1,138 rent.
Corpening, who lives in the Atlanta area, had launched an independent content strategy business that had just taken off before the pandemic hit, causing several of its contracts to fall. She receives about $ 125 a week as part of the pandemic unemployment program and says she won’t be able to pay her bills in about a month. This, despite her temporary work for the U.S. Census and as an election poll worker.
“We’re on the edge,” said Corpening, who is pushing for Action for Unemployment, a project launched by the Center for People’s Democracy to fight for relief. “One more month, if so. Then everything is over for me ”.
Meanwhile, Trump has been spending his last days in the golf office and tweeting angrily as he refuses to accept his loss to Biden in the Nov. 3 election. On Saturday, he again attacked members of his own party for not joining his quest to try to overturn election results with unfounded claims of massive electoral fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.
“If a Democratic presidential candidate had a rigged and stolen election, with evidence of that fact at a level never seen before, Democratic senators would consider it an act of war and fight to the death,” he criticized. He said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republicans “just want to let it go. NO FIGHT! ”
Trump also attacked the Supreme Court, the Justice Department and the FBI, as he seemed to encourage his supporters to meet in Washington on Jan. 6, the day Congress has the Electoral College vote, although a similar event last month turned into violence. , with several people stabbed in the streets of the capital.
In addition to freezing unemployment benefits, Trump’s lack of action on the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protections and put on hold a new round of subsidies for affected businesses, restaurants and theaters, along with money to help schools and distribute vaccines.
The relief is also attached to a $ 1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government running.
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