PRESIDENT-ELECT Joe Biden on Thursday night unveiled a $1.9trillion Covid-19 rescue plan to speed up the country’s response to the pandemic and boost the economy.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan includes $415billion to combat the pandemic, including $160billion for a national vaccination program to push faster rollout of vaccines and expand testing.
It proposes about $440 billion for small businesses and communities devastated by the pandemic.
Biden’s plan also includes $1,400 stimulus checks and boosting supplemental unemployment benefits from $300 to $400 per week through September.
Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said there is “real pain overwhelming the real economy, one where people rely on paychecks, not their investments, to pay for their bills and their meals and their children’s needs.”
“It’s not hard to see that we’re in the middle of a once-in-several-generations economic crisis with a once-in-several-generations public health crisis,” the president-elect said.
“We have to act, and we have to act now.”
Biden called the current coronavirus vaccine rollout a “dismal failure” and said he would lay out a vaccination plan on Friday around his goal to administer 100million shots in his first 100 days in office.
“I know what I just described does not come cheaply,” Biden said in his televised address, but added that the nation “simply cannot afford not to do what I’m proposing.”
Biden did not take questions from reporters following his 30-minute address.
More to follow…
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