The U.S. House passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package Saturday that would extend federal unemployment benefits, provide $1,400 stimulus payments to most Americans and send close to $1 billion in state and local aid to Vermont
The bill, which passed in the wee hours of the morning on a 219 to 212 vote, includes nearly $130 billion to help K-12 schools reopen safely; more than $50 billion for covid testing, contact tracing and mitigation efforts; $20 billion for a national vaccination program; and $26 billion for an emergency rental housing program.
It’s not yet clear how much Vermont would receive in each of those categories. But U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who voted for the relief package on Saturday, told state lawmakers earlier this week that the bill would deliver $960 million to Vermont for its state and local governments.
Welch, Vermont’s sole delegate to the U.S. House, said around $600 million would go to the state and $300 to municipal governments. He said Vermont would have more flexibility to spend the money than it did under the federal CARES Act last year. That package gave Vermont $1.25 billion in federal aid but had tight parameters around how and when it could be spent.
Speaking to legislators on Thursday, Welch said that he was “very strongly in favor of this legislation.”
He added that he and the state’s other two members of Congress — Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — believe their job “is to try to get the resources back to the people of Vermont, and to the governor and General Assembly of Vermont, for you then to do that hard work of implementation in those micro-decisions that are so essential to the wise and productive use of the funds that are going to come to help us get through Covid.”
Welch said the House and Senate hope to send President Joe Biden a final version of the legislation by mid-March.
The bill would extend the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, which provides unemployment benefits to self-employed and pandemic-affected individuals who do not qualify for regular state unemployment benefits. It would also bump up the weekly supplemental federal unemployment benefit from $300 to $400 per week.
In addition, the House legislation would hike the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. But when the bill reaches the Senate, that wage increase will likely have to be stripped from the bill. The Senate’s parliamentarian ruled Thursday that the coronavirus relief package cannot — for procedural reasons — include a $15 minimum wage, a decision that Sanders has criticized.
