Washington | Democrats on Friday called on the White House to continue negotiations to reach a new economic aid plan, while Donald Trump said he was ready to act by executive order to help millions of Americans threatened with deportation and stricken by the unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The US President “and Republicans seem poised to walk off the negotiating table to make weak, restricted and impractical decrees that barely scratch the surface of what is needed to beat the virus and help struggling Americans,” wrote the Democratic leaders of Congress.
Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, have been negotiating for two weeks with Donald Trump’s emissaries. They announced a new meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon.
Already strained less than three months from the presidential and parliamentary elections in November, these negotiations are all the more difficult as the Republicans, who are in the majority in the Senate, are themselves divided.
In the absence of progress, Donald Trump said on Thursday that he could sign a series of executive orders on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, if no agreement was found in Congress by then, concerning “wage charges, protection against expulsions, extensions of (the allowance, editor’s note) unemployment and the repayment of student debts ”.
Its economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said on Friday on Fox Business that the “legal drafting” of a decree on wage costs was already “completed”, but without specifying when it could be signed, pending ‘a possible advance in Congress.
Congress approved in March a titanic $ 2.2 trillion plan to boost the economy, which included federal unemployment benefits of $ 600 per week, in addition to those allocated by states, and a moratorium to prevent evictions. These measures came to an end at the end of July.
Republican parliamentarians presented at the end of July an envelope of 1000 billion dollars, while the Democrats had adopted in May, in the House, their own bill which amounts to 3 trillion dollars.
Among the major points of disagreement is unemployment benefit and its possible amount.
The unemployment rate continued to decline in July in the United States, despite much fewer job creation than in June due to the resurgence of COVID-19.
In all, 32 million people received in mid-July this assistance of 600 additional dollars, alone or in addition to unemployment for those who are entitled to it.