Kudos to President-elect Biden, who on Thursday evening formally introduced his $1.9 trillion coronavirus and downturn relief plan.
Dubbed the American Rescue Plan, it includes beefed-up stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment aid, an eviction moratorium and more assistance for small businesses, states and schools. It also calls for a a paid sick-leave program to encourage people to stay home when they’re ill, as well as a minimum wage increase and a jobs-building infrastructure effort – all in keeping with his pandemic-based “Build Back Better” agenda.
“It’s not hard to see that we are in the middle of a once-in-several generations economic crisis within a once-in-several generations public health crisis,” Biden said. “There is no time to wait. We have to act and act now. This is what the economists are telling us.”
It is also what those experts told a seemingly deafened Trump administration and GOP. Republican lawmakers especially refused to hear it and now we have roughly 4,000 deaths from COVID-19 each day as 23.3 million Americans have been confirmed to have contracted the virus since March. As of Friday morning, more than 388,000 Americans had died.
Biden plans, if Congress approves it, to invest $1 trillion in direct aid; $400 billion in a national vaccination program and related health policies to stem the pandemic, including $130 billion for schools; $400 billion for community support, and $10 billion to support information technology to modernize federal cybersecurity infrastructure.