US Congress set to vote on Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill
The US Congress will take up President Biden’s blockbuster $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill tomorrow.
The House of Representatives, under Democratic party control, is expected to approve it which would enable President Joe Biden to sign the legislation into law later this week.
The Senate, where Democrats have a razor thin majority, passed its version of the bill on Saturday after a marathon session. A few of provisions, namely a plan to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, were scrapped in the Senate.
The changes made by the Senate must be approved by the House before it can be signed into law.
If the mega-spending bill is passed it would represent the United States’ largest anti-poverty measure since the 1960s.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a member of the Democratic leadership in the House of representatives called it a “transformational bill” and told reporters, “We’ll pass it, hopefully with some Republican votes.”
Republicans, who broadly supported economic relief earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, have criticised the price tag of the relief package, calling for a pared down version of the bill.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki praised the legislation at a news conference yesterday, saying that while there were some changes on the margins, it represented the “core” of what Biden originally proposed.