US: Donald Trump rejects COVID rescue package
The president called the bill a disgrace and demanded that individuals receive much more than a $600 stimulus. Opposition Democrats agreed with him on that point.
Donald Trump has urged Congress to amend what he calls a wasteful bill
US President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that he might not authorize the COVID relief bill worth $900 billion (€739 billion).
In a video released on Twitter, he called the bill a disgrace. Trump said Congress should increase the amount in the stimulus checks from what he considered the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for couples.
He also complained about money in the bill going towards the Smithsonian Institution, fish breeding, and foreign countries.
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Source: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Both chambers of Congress passed an additional coronavirus relief package, with a $900 billion price tag, on Monday night. The legislation includes a provision to deliver direct payments to eligible Americans, though this package only allocates $600 per individual.
Congressional leaders negotiated the fine-print of the eventual package for months, as Democrats continued to block legislation put forth by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Stimulus (CARES) Act, passed in March, originally provided $1,200 stimulus checks to Americans. Though the number this time around is significantly lower, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the funds legislated in the new package passed on Monday are still “significant.”
Backlash grows against House GOP proposal to replace Obamacare – Washington Postby wpjljron
Wednesday, March 8th, 2017.Backlash grows against House GOP proposal to replace Obamacare – Washington PostLawmakers prepared Wednesday for a marathon day sifting through a Republican proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act, which has met with widespread resistance from conservatives in and out of Congress, moderates in the Senate and key industry stakeholders since House GOP leaders released it on Monday. The most imminent and serious threat to the […]
Lawmakers prepared Wednesday for a marathon day sifting through a Republican proposal to revise the Affordable Care Act, which has met with widespread resistance from conservatives in and out of Congress, moderates in the Senate and key industry stakeholders since House GOP leaders released it on Monday.
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In its final days, the Trump administration plans to sell off drilling rights in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Located in the northeastern portion of the state, its 19,286,722 acres make up the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States.
The sale of said rights would cap a decades-long battle to drill in the area. It’s the first big move on the matter since 2017, when the Republican-led Congress passed a massive tax bill that opened the Arctic Refuge to oil development.
Auctioning off the rights could improve the local economy, especially for Kaktovik, the sole community inside the refuge’s coastal plain. The refuge potentially contains billions of dollars in oil and gas reserves. But it would also disrupt one of the last expanses of untouched land in the United States. Members of the Gwich’in tribe, who are native to the area, and other climate change activists have pushed back on the move.
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The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an expanse of public land in Alaska the size of South Carolina, is one of the last untouched landscapes in the world. The native Gwich’in people who have lived in harmony with the area’s migratory Porcupine caribou herd for centuries call the refuge’s vast coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit, or “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins.”
But in the past few years, the fate of the refuge’s roughly 19.5 million acres has become rather bleak:
Its permafrost is melting rapidly, along with the rest of the Arctic region. The refuge’s coastal plain also remains at risk to oil and gas development, which companies have long had their eye on but have been barred from doing until now.