The newest coronavirus relief bill, titled the HEROES Act, calls for another round of stimulus checks for Americans, but it still has to clear the Senate and get President Donald Trump’s stamp of approval.
The House of Representatives passed the $3 trillion piece of legislation aimed at providing financial relief for people and businesses impacted by the pandemic on Friday. Its narrow passage of 208 votes in favor to 199 against indicates the uphill battle it may face in a Republican-controlled Senate and at the desk of a president who has called it “dead on arrival.” It is not expected to pass in its current form.
Like the first stimulus package, the CARES Act, the HEROES Act calls for economic impact payments of $1,200 for individuals. To receive the full amount, an individual must have an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less or $150,000 or less if two people are filing a joint return.
An additional $1,200 would be allocated for dependents—up to $3,600—and the bill caps payments at $6,000 per household. Under the HEROES Act, undocumented immigrants who weren’t eligible for relief in the CARES Act would retroactively receive the $1,200 payment.
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi unveiled the relief package on Tuesday and called for people to have empathy for those who may be unable to pay rent or feed their families. More than 36 million people have filed for unemployment since the middle of March. At the time of Pelosi’s remarks, the current report was 33 million unemployment claims, a number she called “almost unimaginable.”
“This is not only necessary to their survival but it is also a stimulus to this economy,” Pelosi said. “We all know that we must put more money into the pockets of the American people.”
Economic impact payments received bipartisan support the first time around and Trump has expressed support for a possible second round of checks. However, the HEROES Act has faced pushback from Senate Republicans, some of whom say legislators should wait to see the full economic impact of previous stimulus bills before moving forward with the new one.
Legislators have also targeted parts of the bill that are unlikely to get Republican support and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the House Democrats’ bill for being a “seasonal catalog of left-wing oddities” masquerading as a coronavirus relief bill.
Only one Republican, Representative Peter King of New York, who is not running for reelection when his term is up in November, voted in favor of the House bill. Ahead of the vote, he told Fox News that he didn’t agree with everything in the bill but his only choice was to vote in favor of it because his state needs financial help.
“I can be as much a red state person as anyone. But now we’re talking about survival. And this is no place for politics. There’s a lot in the bill that I disagree with, but Mitch McConnell refuses to bring up aid to state and local governments. New York will absolutely collapse if that aid money is not there,” King said.
King said he voted for it “reluctantly,” adding that passing the bill would give Republicans in the Senate an opportunity to “work with something” and strip out what they “believe doesn’t belong there.” If there is a vote in the Senate, Republican senators said it likely won’t happen until after the Memorial Day recess.
