Trump signs orders extending monetary relief for Americans
President Donald Trump on Saturday signed executive actions extending financial relief to Americans hit by the coronavirus pandemic as polls showed a big majority of voters unhappy along with his handling of the crisis.
The four measures marked a presidential show of strength after Trump's Republican party and White House team failed to trust opposition Democrats in Congress on a new stimulus package targeted at stopping vulnerable Americans from falling through the cracks.
"We've had it and we're going to save American jobs and provide relief to the American workers," Trump said at a press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, where he was spending the weekend.
With double digit unemployment, disruption to businesses from social distancing rules, and persistent coronavirus spread, many Americans have been relying on relief measures approved earlier by Congress, but which mostly expired in July.
Trump said his decision to circumvent Congress with executive actions means relief money getting "rapidly distributed."
The truth is, his measures will probably face court challenges because Congress controls federal spending, and regardless they may soon add up to less money than primarily appears.
For Trump, lagging badly in the polls against his Democratic rival Joe Biden ahead of the November 3 presidential election, the orders were partly about showing he is in charge.
He turned the signing ceremony in the ballroom of the driver into an assault on his opponents and threw in a number of false claims about his accomplishments in office.
To cheers from club members invited to watch the event, Trump insulted the Democratic "crazy" leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, denounced Biden as "far left," and claimed that Democrats want to "steal the election."
Biden called Trump's orders Saturday "a series of half-baked measures."
"They are just another cynical ploy made to deflect responsibility," Biden said, adding that Americans desire a "real leader" who work to hammer out a deal with lawmakers.
One key Trump order promises to get US$400 weekly put into Americans' unemployment benefits, while two others offer some protection from evictions and relief for student education loans.
The US$400 assistance is below the US$600 offered in the expired stimulus package. It may also wrap up amounting and then US$300 extra weekly, because Trump said US$100 will be provided from state, not federal, budgets - and only when states were willing or in a position to do so.
A fourth measure - opposed by many Republicans in addition to Democrats - ordered a freeze in payroll taxes. This makes a major headline for Trump but is merely a deferral, instead of a cut in the tax.
Democrats, Republicans and White House negotiators had worked all last week without coming near to a deal on an overall congressional relief bill for all those struggling to make ends meet in the world's richest economy.
Democrats pushed for an enormous new US$3 trillion stimulus package aimed at propping up the economy, mending the tattered postal system in time for the presidential election and giving the unemployed a supplementary US$600 a week.
Democrats later announced they could drop the high cost but refused the Republicans' offer of a US$1 trillion package.--AFP
