Republicans and Democrats have reached an agreement in principle overnight for the approval of a stimulus package for the economy that alleviates the effects of the pandemic and prevents the closure of the Government.
Finally, the stimulus package will have a total value of 900,000 million dollars (734,260 million euros).
The Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Patrick Toomey, has finally been the one who has agreed to support the project, but the legal text has yet to be fully agreed, according to ‘The New York Times’.
The main stumbling block this time around was whether the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department could establish emergency loan programs to allow credit to continue to flow to businesses and municipal governments, as they could in the early stages of the pandemic.
While the Republicans considered that maintaining it meant giving too much power to the future Biden administration, the Democrats accused the Republicans of wanting to leave the new government without a response to an emergency.
After modifying some aspects of the Toomey amendment, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumar has said that the total agreement is “very close” and is expected to be voted in the House of Representatives and the Senate this Sunday.
Previously, the negotiation had stalled on multiple aspects from the total size of the stimulus package to the amount of individual checks for the most vulnerable, unleashing a scene as unusual as seeing progressive Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator defend an amendment together. Republican Josh Hawley, one of the party’s potential candidates for the 2024 presidential election.
The agreed text will finally grant benefits for the unemployed of 300 dollars per week (about 244 euros), direct payments of 600 dollars (489 euros), 330,000 million (269,229 million euros) in loans to small companies, 80,000 million (65,267 million of euros) to schools and an unspecified amount for the distribution of vaccines.
Apart from this plan, the Government’s fiscal spending project for 2021 must also be approved.
