Senate adopts Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion plan

After hours of debates, frenzied negotiations and a marathon vote on numerous amendments, the US Senate finally approved, on Saturday March 6, the $ 1.9 trillion plan desired by Joe Biden to revive the economy in the United States. . The bill was passed only by the votes of Democratic senators, by 50 votes to 49.

The text is due for debate next week in the House of Representatives, where the majority Democrats are expected to approve it quickly. The Democratic president wants to promulgate it by March 14, before the planned suspension of the payment of unemployment benefits. This would be the third exceptional aid plan approved by Congress during the pandemic.

“We have taken a giant leap” to help Americans, Joe Biden said from the White House shortly after the vote. “This law will grant more aid to more people than anything the federal government has done for decades”Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer said just before the final vote. Never before has Congress spent so much money “So inconsistently or after such a loose process”, retorted Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Read the editorial of the “World”: A poorly calibrated economic support plan

Central role of moderate democrats

The stimulus plan includes checks of $ 1,400 for millions of Americans, as well as $ 350 billion in aid to states and local communities. It also includes billions of dollars to fight the pandemic, including 49 billion for screening and research, in addition to 14 billion for the distribution of the vaccine.

Debates had been paralyzed for more than nine hours on Friday by the opposition, reported backstage, from Joe Manchin, a senator who defines himself as “Moderate conservative democrat”, to a new provision on unemployment benefits, yet the result of an agreement publicly supported by the White House.

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It was only after a call from Joe Biden and concessions that the elected official finally gave his support to a new amendment, which provides for the extension of allowances of $ 300 per week until the beginning of September, instead of end of September, as initially planned. This compromise underlines the immense power of a handful of moderates in this Senate without a comfortable majority.

With their 50 senators, against 50 Republicans, Democrats can count on the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris in the event of a tie in the upper house, but they cannot afford any defection. The Republicans have opposed the stimulus package, which they believe is too expensive and poorly targeted. One of them was absent on Saturday.

18 million Americans get an allowance

Citing the memory of the great crisis of 2008, Joe Biden insists that we must think big to resolutely propel the economy towards recovery, without risk of relapse. The US president had thus tempered on Friday the enthusiasm created by good employment figures in the United States, certainly due, according to him, to the $ 900 billion stimulus plan which had been adopted at the end of December and signed by his predecessor Donald Trump.

Without new help, all this “Will slow down”, he warned, “We cannot take one step forward and two steps back”. In February, 379,000 jobs were created, almost three times more than in January, the labor department announced in the morning. But it will still take time to return to pre-pandemic levels: 18 million Americans are still receiving an allowance, after losing their jobs or seeing their income plunge.

“At this rate, it will take two years to get back to the nails” and return to the level of February 2020, warned the US president. From the spring, consumption should experience a first jump, driven by vaccinations and public aid distributed since the start of the crisis which, coupled with falling spending, filled the bank accounts of Americans, especially the wealthiest.

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The World with AFP

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