In March of this year, the US House of Representatives approved a program to support the masses amid the coronavirus outbreak. Representatives offered to allocate tens of billions of dollars from the country's budget in order to help victims who were experiencing significant losses in the field of physical health and material security. The list of proposed measures included financial assistance, unemployment benefits, and free medical care to detect the ill-fated virus. In addition, attention was also paid to supporting the country's economy, which is suffering from the pandemic.
Democrats have made critical additions to the previously agreed program that should reduce the cost of the bill.
The updated version of the program provides for a new deduction that is intended to support schools, restaurants, small businesses, concert halls, airline employees, etc. Moreover, it will provide $436 billion in emergency aid payments to state and local governments. Most Americans, according to the updated version of the previously agreed program, will be able to receive higher unemployment benefits of around $1,200.
According to the proposed bill, payments are also provided for preventing thousands of layoffs in passenger airlines amounting to $25 billion. The bill also defines the transfer of $3 billion to airline contractors.
House of Congress Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has not yet specified a date when the proposal should be voted on.
For comparison, here is a similar bill that was proposed by Republicans in early September of this year, and provided for payments of up to $500 billion to support various sectors of the country's economy. To support schools in times of crisis, Republicans proposed allocating $105 billion from the federal budget. As for the development and research of a coronavirus vaccine, the Republicans proposed to allocate another $31 billion in this area.
Unfortunately, formal negotiations on a new emergency economic assistance package did not take place in August.
