The House voted just before 1 a.m. Saturday to pass an emergency coronavirus response bill to increase testing and aid people kept from work, a measure meant for quick signing by President Trump next week as the government tries to arrest the pandemic.
The final vote was 363 to 40, with one member voting “present.”
“We put ‘families first’ with paid sick leave — paid sick days, family and medical leave, unemployment insurance,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The bill will provide for free coronavirus testing, guarantee workers two weeks of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid leave, increase unemployment benefits, provide lunches for children who would normally eat at school, and increase Medicaid funding.
“And there are some things that they wanted that we have to put off until the next time because, just, they came in late,” said Pelosi, referring to Republican requests to change the bill.
The legislation, which is expected to be approved by the GOP Senate when it returns next week, came after intense talks between Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, which continued through the evening Friday.
It was passed early Saturday morning within hours of the text being made public Friday evening, which in turn came only hours after Trump backed the deal on Twitter. There was no official estimate of how much it would cost.
The measure is a response to quickly rising coronavirus case counts and extreme stock market volatility, including the worst day for stocks Thursday since 1987.
House Democrats rushed this week to put together legislation, unveiling a bill Wednesday evening. That version would have created a new “emergency paid leave” federal benefit for people forced into quarantine, paid out by the federal government through the Social Security Administration. The version passed Saturday morning instead would have businesses pay the leave, amounting to two-thirds of workers’ regular earnings, and reimburse them through tax credits.
The latest version of the bill also scales back the added federal funding to states for Medicaid.
Left out of the package was Trump’s request for a payroll tax holiday through the end of the year, a proposal that would have constituted roughly a $850 billion tax cut.
“We got almost everything we wanted,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat.
“Free testing. Paid sick leave. Unemployment extension. Increased funding for Medicare and school lunches. The President needed a deal and so basically acceded to everyone of the Speaker’s priorities,” said Khanna, top adviser for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
The legislation would add to administrative actions Trump has already taken, including Friday by announcing that he would waive interest payments on federal student loans and loosen regulations to allow hospitals and doctors to cope with a massive influx of coronavirus patients. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted emergency approval for a coronavirus test that could speed up diagnostics tenfold.
Pelosi said that she aims to pass additional legislation to address the fallout of the pandemic once this initial emergency bill is through.
So far, in the United States, more than 2,110 people have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 48 people have died. Lack of testing has been a major issue, as top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci highlighted on Thursday during a House Oversight Committee hearing in which he acknowledged that the lack of widespread testing was a “failing.” Accordingly, the number of total people infected with the virus is likely severely underreported.
Governors in New York, Washington state, Oregon, Ohio, and California have instituted bans on large public gatherings in an effort to stem the coronavirus pandemic. Former Trump FDA chief Scott Gottlieb has even suggested that small gatherings and parties should be canceled to limit the pandemic.
