US President-elect Joe Biden announced a $1.9 trillion (€1.56 trillion) stimulus package on Thursday to revitalize a flagging economy and speed up the nation's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Biden laid out the first of his "two-step plan of rescue and recovery" in a prime-time address.The spending proposal will build on the two massive relief packages approved by Congress in 2020.
It lists a host of measures including providing financial aid to individuals, state and local government, and businesses struggling with the prolonged economic fallout:
- Stimulus payment checks for $1,400 – topping up the $600 checks issued under the most recent COVID-19 bill
- Raises the minimum wage to $15 an hour
- $350 billion in funding to state and local governments — a proposal that Republican lawmakers had blocked all last year
- $160 billion for a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign
- About $440 billion for small businesses and communities particularly hard hit by the pandemic
- $170 billion for schools, with the goal of getting most institutions serving kindergarten through eighth grade open in the first 100 days of his administration
- Increases supplemental unemployment insurance to $400 a week from the current $300 a week now; also extending it through September
- Extends moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions until September and funding rental
- Provides $30 billion in rental and utility assistance for families
- Stimulus payment checks for $1,400 – topping up the $600 checks issued under the most recent COVID-19 bill
- Raises the minimum wage to $15 an hour
- $350 billion in funding to state and local governments — a proposal that Republican lawmakers had blocked all last year
- $160 billion for a national COVID-19 vaccination campaign
- About $440 billion for small businesses and communities particularly hard hit by the pandemic
- $170 billion for schools, with the goal of getting most institutions serving kindergarten through eighth grade open in the first 100 days of his administration
- Increases supplemental unemployment insurance to $400 a week from the current $300 a week now; also extending it through September
- Extends moratoriums on foreclosures and evictions until September and funding rental
- Provides $30 billion in rental and utility assistance for families