Covid-19 Stimulus Bill Stalls While US Economy Shows Gains

Washington, March 6 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Mar, 2021 ) :US lawmakers on Friday grappled with drama-inducing delays to President Joe Biden's massive stimulus proposal, with an economic backdrop of better-than-expected hiring in February as businesses battered by the pandemic began recruiting employees again.

Negotiations in the evenly divided Senate dragged on for more than nine hours as centrist Democrats advocating fiscal restraint sought changes to the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package.

The impasse -- over the amount and duration of supplemental unemployment insurance benefits for people left jobless during the pandemic -- imperils the entire bill days before the existing benefits expire for millions of Americans.

With the fate of Biden's sweeping American Rescue Plan hanging in the balance, figures signalled that the world's largest economy may finally be healing.

Payrolls jumped by 379,000 last month, which was almost double expectations and pushed the unemployment rate down slightly to 6.2 percent, the Labor Department reported.

The vast majority of the gains were in the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes the bars and restaurants that were the first to close as business restrictions to stop Covid-19 began nearly a year ago.

Yet the economy was still short 9.5 million jobs compared to February 2020 before the pandemic began, the report said.

Biden said the data underscored the need for lawmakers to approve his plan for nearly $1.9 trillion in aid, and his economic advisers said the current pace of job gains mean it would take two years to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

"We can't go one step forward and two steps backward," Biden said at the White House. "The rescue plan is absolutely essential to turning this around." Biden's proposal would be the third major stimulus package to help the economy weather the coronavirus crisis. It includes a range of measures such as expanded aid for small businesses and the unemployed as well as stimulus checks up to $1,400 sent directly to Americans.

An effort to include a national minimum wage hike to $15 an hour -- a Biden priority -- failed, however.

The Republican opposition has argued the overall plan is excessive, since the economy already has begun to recover.

The proposal faces a narrow path to passage in the Senate.

On Friday the chamber began an endurance test of votes on amendments to the bill, known as a vote-a-rama, only to stall at nearly the first hurdle with a battle over unemployment insurance.

Republicans on Thursday began by demanding Senate staff read the 628-page bill aloud, which took nearly 11 hours and concluded well after midnight.