WASHINGTON – Congressional and White House leaders finally announced Wednesday morning that they have an agreement on a $2 trillion dollar emergency bill, which is meant to blunt the coronavirus fallout. The Senate is expecting to vote on the bill as early as Wednesday evening, with the House expected to consider the bill shortly after it passes.
This takes the American people one step closer to getting direct payments of up to $1,200 dollars and about $500 for each child in the household.
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“It’s good news for the doctors and nurses around the country who are waiting for more masks and more funding,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY.
For large corporations, the $500 billion set aside has stronger restrictions for how the money should be spent, and to address that, Democrats have secured an oversight board during negotiations. The board will likely be made up of congressional members and Trump administration officials who will scrutinize the lending decisions for this pandemic recovery.
The final agreement adds limits to the use of the money, to ensure workers aren’t laid off and executives don’t get salary bumps. But even with the latest provisions, some Democrats like Senator Bernie Sanders said it’s still not enough.
Sanders took to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon: “Unless Republican Senators drop their objections to the coronavirus legislation, I am prepared to put a hold on this bill until stronger conditions are imposed on the $500 billion corporate welfare fund.”
The agreement isn’t released in full but negotiators have agreed to bumped-up unemployment benefits for four months instead of three, student loan freezes, including no acruement of federal interest, and billions more for hospitals, medical equipment, and schools.
“This is not a moment of celebration but one of necessity, we have the anguish of the American people wondering about the future,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The agreement is already receiving criticism from some California representatives like Sherman Oaks Democrat, Brad Sherman, who said the bill should include paying for more medical research.
Sherman is also introducing several bills of his own this week addressing the economic fall-out with measures to ensure credit scores aren’t negatively impacted, as well as requiring public companies to disclose their risks to pandemics.
Sherman has been in Congress for 23 years.
“We’ve seen other epidemics rise up and not really hit us with this kind of force, SARs, Ebola, but this one has hit, so obviously we haven’t seen anything like this in many decades,” said Sherman.
Even if the Senate passes the bill soon, it’s unclear at this time how the Senate’s $2 trillion bill will move forward as House representatives are in-district this week.