Late last night/ early this morning, the Senate and White House negotiators reached a deal on a $2-trillion relief package. The Senate is expected to reconvene later today and approve it in short order.
While we haven’t seen the text yet, the following is from a letter that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent to Democrats that seeks to explain, in his words, some of the changes between the initial version and the version that was agreed to last night/this morning:
- 4 months of more unemployment insurance instead of 3 months.
- $55 billion increase in the Marshall Plan for our Health Care System.
- $150 billion for a state, tribal, and local Coronavirus Relief fund.
- $10 billion for SBA emergency grants of up to $10,000 to provide immediate relief for small business operating costs.
- $17 billion for SBA to cover 6 months of payments for small businesses with existing SBA loans.
- $30 billion in emergency education funding and $25 billion in emergency transit funding.
- $30 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund to provide financial assistance to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, as well as private nonprofits providing critical and essential services.
- More than $10 billion for the Indian Health Services, and other tribal programs.
- Prohibit businesses controlled by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and heads of Executive Departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs.
- Make rent, mortgage and utility costs eligible for SBA loan forgiveness.
- Ban stock buybacks for the term of the government assistance plus 1 year on any company receiving a government loan from the bill.
- Establish robust worker protections attached to all federal loans for businesses.
- Create real-time public reporting of Treasury transactions under the Act, including terms of loans, investments or other assistance to corporations.
- Create of Treasury Department Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery to provide oversight of Treasury loans and a Pandemic Response Accountability Committee to protect taxpayer dollars.
- Add a retention tax credit for employers to encourage businesses to keep workers on payroll during the crisis.
- Provide income tax exclusion for individuals who are receiving student loan repayment assistance from their employer.
- Eliminated $3 billion bailout for big oil.
- Eliminated “secret bailout” provision that would have allowed bailouts to corporations to be concealed for 6 months.
- Saved hundreds of thousands of airline industry jobs and prohibited airlines from stock buybacks and CEO bonuses.
On the House side, Speaker Pelosi has expressed her support for having the chamber adopt the Senate measure.
Read more about the situation here in the Washington Post and here in Politico.
We will continue to provide further details as they become available.