American Rescue Plan

American Rescue Plan

Full title	Emergency Legislative Package to Fund Vaccinations, Provide Immediate, Direct Relief to Families Bearing the Brunt of the COVID-19 Crisis, and Support Struggling Communities
Acronym	ARP
Colloquial name(s)	American Rescue Plan
Introduced in	117th United States Congress
Introduced on	February 2, 2021
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. Con. Res. 5 by Bernie Sanders on February 2, 2021 Passed the Senate on February 2, 2021 (50-49) Passed the House on February 3, 2021 (218-212)

The American Rescue Plan is a $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposed by President Joe Biden to speed up the United States' recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession. He plans to pass this as one of his first bills into law through the 117th Congress. First proposed on January 14, 2021, the package builds upon many of the measures in the CARES Act from March and in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 from December.

Provisions

A video from the Biden Administration promoting the American Rescue Plan.

The New York Times reported that key elements of the plan include:

• Extending expanded unemployment benefits with a $400 weekly supplement through end of September (vs. March 31 currently)
• $1,400 direct payments to individuals
• $20 billion for a national vaccine program, including preparation of community vaccination centers
• Funding for 100,000 public health workers for vaccination outreach and contact tracing
• Funding to help address disproportionate impact on people of color, for community health centers, prisons, and jails
• Emergency paid leave for over 100 million Americans
• Tax credits for families to offset up to $8,000 in annual child care costs
• Aid to renters with unpaid debts to landlords
• Grants to small businesses
• Funds to accelerate vaccine deployment and to safely reopen most schools within 100 days
• $350 billion to help state and local governments bridge budget shortfalls.

Legislative history

Negotiations

Letter from Senate GOP to President Biden detailing concerns of the American Rescue Plan

Ten Republican senators announced plans to unveil a roughly $600 billion COVID-19 relief package as a counterproposal to President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion plan meant to force negotiations. The senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio, told Biden in a letter that they devised the plan "in the spirit of bipartisanship and unity" that the President has urged and said they planned to release a full proposal on February 1. On the same day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a budget resolution co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders as a step to pass the legislation without support from the Republican Party. The next day, Biden met with Majority Leader Schumer and other Democrats regarding the relief package.

Budget resolution passage

The United States Senate voted 50–49 to open debate on the resolution, which would allow Democrats to pass the relief package without support from Republicans through the process of reconciliation. The House voted 218-212 to approve the budget resolution. On February 4, a vote-a-rama session began, and the Senate introduced amendments to the relief package, including a amendment in a 90-10 vote that would provide direct relief to the restaurant industry.

One of the many non-binding budget amendments in the vote-a-rama session was meant to prohibit people who are in the country illegally from receiving pandemic relief checks. The non-binding amendments are not likely to have any effect on the final relief bill. The minority party uses the hundreds of non-binding votes in the hours-long vote-a-rama session to send messages. Under current law, people in the country illegally are already prohibited from receiving checks. The amendment passed with eight Democrats joining all Republicans. Vice President Kamala Harris cast her first tiebreaking vote as Vice President to give final Senate approval to the reconciliation bill, sending it to the House to approve the changes, and allowing drafting of the relief bill to begin in the committees. The House approved the resolution 219-209, with Jared Golden being the sole Democrat to join all Republicans in opposition to the bill due to a preference for a separate vaccine bill instead of the longer reconciliation process.

References

This article "American Rescue Plan" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:American Rescue Plan. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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