WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) – Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to survive were set to expire at midnight on Saturday, unless President Donald Trump signed a year-end COVID relief and retirement project. spending law that was considered to be dealt with before your sudden objections.
Trump’s refusal to sign the bipartisan package by demanding greater relief checks from COVID and complaining about “pig” spending could also force a federal government shutdown when the money runs out at 12:01 am on Tuesday in a pandemic.
“It is a game of chess and we are pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who may lose her $ 129 weekly unemployment benefit unless Trump signs the package in law or succeed in your unlikely quest for change.
Washington has been staggering since Trump threw the package into limbo, after he had already obtained general approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House assured Republican leaders that Trump would support him.
Instead, he attacked the project’s plan to provide $ 600 COVID relief checks to most Americans – insisting it should be $ 2,000. House Republicans quickly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session. But Trump was not influenced.
“I just want to give our big guys $ 2,000 instead of the miserable $ 600 that is now in the account,” Trump tweeted on Saturday in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is spending the holiday. “Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork’.”
President-elect Joe Biden asked Trump to sign the bill immediately, as two federal unemployment benefits programs were due to expire on Saturday.
“It is the day after Christmas and millions of families do not know if they will be able to survive because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill passed by Congress by an overwhelming, two-party majority,” said Biden. said in a statement. He accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that has “devastating consequences”.
“I’ve been talking to people who are afraid of being thrown out of their homes during the Christmas holidays, and they still can be if we don’t sign this bill,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat.
Lauren Bauer, an economic studies researcher at the Brookings Institution, estimated that 11 million people would lose aid from programs immediately without additional relief; millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits in weeks.
Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and a senior researcher at the Century Foundation, said the number could be close to 14 million because unemployment has increased since Thanksgiving.
“All of these people and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” tweeted Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, on Wednesday.
How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state in which they live, the program in which they count and when they signed up to receive benefits. In some states, people with regular unemployment insurance may continue to receive payments from a program that extends benefits when the unemployment rate exceeds a certain threshold, said Stettner.
Some 9.5 million people, however, rely on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which ends on Saturday. This program has made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, concert workers and others who are not normally eligible. After receiving their latest checks, recipients will be unable to request further assistance after Saturday, Stettner said.
While payments can be received retroactively, any gap means more difficulties and uncertainties for Americans who have already faced bureaucratic delays, often spending much of their savings to stay afloat while waiting for payments to begin.
They are people like Earl McCarthy, a father of four who lives in South Fulton, Georgia, and has been unemployed since he lost his job as a sales representative in a luxury senior community. He said he would run out of income in the second week of January if Trump doesn’t sign the bill.
McCarthy said he had already spent most of his savings while waiting five months to start receiving unemployment insurance. After leaving weekly messages with the unemployment agency, McCarthy contacted the office of the mayor of South Fulton and then with his state legislative representative for help. He finally started receiving payments in November.
“The whole experience was horrible,” said McCarthy, who is receiving about $ 350 a week in unemployment insurance.
“For me, I shudder to think that if I hadn’t saved anything or had an emergency fund during those five months, where would we be?” he said. “It will be difficult if the president does not sign this bill.”
The bill awaiting Trump’s signature would also activate a $ 300 weekly federal supplement for unemployment payments.
Sharon Shelton Corpening hoped that the extra help would allow her 83-year-old mother, with whom she lives, to stop consuming her social security payments to pay the $ 1,138 rent.
Corpening, who lives in the Atlanta area, launched a freelance content strategy business that was taking off before the pandemic hit, causing several of its contracts to be broken. She is receiving about $ 125 a week under the pandemic unemployment program and says she will not be able to pay her bills in about a month. This, despite her temporary work for the US census and as an election poll worker.
“We are on the brink,” said Corpening, who lobbies for Action against Unemployment, a project launched by the Center for Popular Democracy to fight for help. “Another month, if that. So, I run out of everything. “
Trump, meanwhile, has been spending his last days at the office playing golf and tweeting angrily, while refusing to accept his defeat for Biden in the November 3 election. On Saturday, he again attacked members of his own party for failing to join his search to try to overturn the election results with baseless allegations of mass electoral fraud that were repeatedly rejected by the courts.
“If a Democratic presidential candidate had a rigged and stolen election, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, Democratic senators would consider it an act of war and fight to the death,” he criticized. He said Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and his Republicans “just want to let it go. NO FIGHTS!”
Trump also attacked the Supreme Court, the Justice Department and the FBI while appearing to encourage his supporters to meet in Washington on January 6, the day that Congress records the Electoral College vote – although a similar event last month turned into violence, with several people being stabbed in the streets of the capital.
In addition to freezing unemployment benefits, Trump’s lack of action on the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protections and suspend a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and cinemas, along with money to help schools and distribute food. vaccines.
The relief is also associated with a $ 1.4 trillion government financing bill to keep the federal government running.
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Olson reported from New York.