Trump announced the signing in a statement Sunday night.
The massive bill includes $ 1.4 billion to fund government agencies through September and includes other priorities at the end of the session, such as money for cash-starved transit systems and an increase in food stamp benefits.
The bill, now signed by the president, contains $ 600 checks for Americans earning less than $ 75,000 a year. Democrats wanted bigger stimulus tests, but representatives of the White House and the IDP fought to reduce the stimulus tests.
Second stimulus checks: see how much money you can receive under the new stimulus bill
After both parties agreed and passed the bill, Trump then announced that the $ 600 checks were too small. He said he would not sign it until the amount was increased to $ 2000.
On Sunday, Trump signed the bill without changing the amount of the checks. In a statement, however, he called on Congress to pass more bills.
“I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message making it clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will return a new version, item by item, to Congress, accompanied by the formal recall request. to Congress urging that those funds be removed from the account, ‘he wrote.
He reiterated that he wanted a bill that would give $ 2,000 to Americans.
Democratic leaders in both houses supported the $ 2,000 check plan, but the IDP leadership rejected it. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Trump for signing the package and preventing a closure “at a time when our country could not afford it.”
Democrats promise more help will come once President Joe Biden takes office, but Republicans point to a wait-and-see approach.
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Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to end up lapsed overnight as President Donald Trump refused to sign a COVID relief and spending bill at the end of the year that was seen as a final agreement before his sudden objections .
The fate of the two-party package remained in shambles on Sunday as Trump demanded ever-larger COVID relief tests and complained about spending ‘pork’. Without the widespread funding offered by the massive measure, a strike by the government will take place when money runs out at 12:01 on Tuesday.
“It’s a chess game and we are pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a single mother of three children in South Bend, Indiana, losing her $ 129-a-week unemployment benefit unless Trump signs the package or the unlikely success succeed. search for change.
Washington has cracked down since Trump signed the agreement after it was approved in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.
Instead, he opposed the bill, which plans to provide $ 600 COVID relief tests to most Americans – and insisted it should be $ 2,000. House Republicans quickly dismissed the idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump is not impressed by the fact that the country is in the grip of a pandemic.
“I simply want to get $ 2,000 for our big people, rather than the meager $ 600 that is now in the bill,” Trump tweeted Saturday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he spends the holidays. “Also stop the billions of dollars on ‘pork’.”
Elected President Joe Biden has asked Trump to sign the bill immediately, as the deadline for midnight Saturday is close for two federal programs that provide unemployment assistance.
“It’s the day after Christmas, and millions of families do not know if they can do it because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill passed by Congress by an overwhelming and two-fold majority,” he said. said Biden. said in a statement. He accused Trump of a “distance from responsibility” that had “devastating consequences”.
“I have spoken to people who are afraid that they will be kicked out of their homes during the Christmas holidays, and it could still be if we do not sign this bill,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.
Lauren Bauer, an associate student in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, calculated that 11 million people would immediately lose help from the programs without additional relief; millions more will use up other unemployment benefits within a few weeks.
Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior contributor to the Century Foundation brainstorm, said the number could be closer to 14 million as unemployment has risen since Thanksgiving.
“All these people and their families will suffer if Trump does not sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Liberal Institute for Economic Policy, tweeted on Wednesday.
How and when people would be affected by the decay depends on the state in which they lived, the program they rely on and when they apply for benefits. In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance will continue to receive payments under a program that increases benefits when the unemployment rate exceeds a certain threshold, Stettner said.
However, about 9.5 million people relied on the Pandemic unemployment assistance program, which expired completely on Saturday. The program has made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, performers and others who are not normally eligible. After receiving their last checks, the recipients would no longer be able to submit assistance, Stettner said.
While retrospective payments could be received, any gap would mean more hardship and uncertainty for Americans who have already struggled with bureaucratic delays, and would often keep many of their savings afloat while waiting for payments to begin.
These were people like Earl McCarthy, a father of four who lives in South Fulton, Georgia and has relied on unemployment since losing his job as a sales representative for a luxury senior housing community. He said he would have no income by the second week of January if Trump refused to sign the bill.
McCarthy said he had already burned a lot of his savings when he waited five months to receive about $ 350 a week in unemployment benefits.
“The whole experience was awful,” McCarthy said. “I shudder if I had spared nothing during those five months or had an emergency fund, where would we have been?”
He added: “It will be difficult if the president does not sign this bill.”
The bill, which was in Florida awaiting Trump’s signing, would also activate a weekly $ 300 federal supplement on unemployment payments.
Sharon Shelton Corpening hoped the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop her Social Security payments to earn their $ 1,138 rent.
Corpening, who lives in the Atlanta area, launched a freelance content strategy business that started just before the pandemic, which resulted in several of her contracts failing. She receives about $ 125 a week under the unemployment pandemic program and says she will not be able to pay her bills in about a month. This, despite her temporary work for the U.S. Census and as an election candidate.
“We are on the brink,” said Corpening, working for Unemployment Action, a project launched by the Center for Popular Democracy to fight for relief. “If it’s another month. Then I’ll touch everything. ‘
In addition to the unemployment benefits that have already lapsed, Trump’s continued refusal to sign the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protection and a new round of subsidies for businesses, restaurants and theaters that were hit hard, as well as money for cash-starved transit systems and for vaccine distribution.
The relief was also linked to a $ 1.4 billion legal funding bill to keep the federal government running until September, which would mean the federal shutdown would not be signed by midnight Tuesday.
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Olson reports from New York.
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