President Donald Trump signed a bill containing $900 billion in pandemic relief, the White House said, triggering the flow of aid to individuals and businesses and averting the risk of a partial government shutdown on Tuesday.
In addition to aid to stem the economic effects of the pandemic, the legislation Congress passed Monday also includes $1.4 trillion in government spending to fund federal agencies through the end of the fiscal year in September. The government had been operating on temporary spending authority that expires after the end of the day Monday.
Nathan Horn-Mitchem is senior vice president and chief information security officer at Provident Bank.
Amanda LeClair is an analystat Forrester Research serving the needs of application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals. In this role, she helps clients understand the changing enterprise application services market and navigate the new engagement models of leading technology services firms. In her coverage, she explores business applications ecosystems, digital business transformation trends, and technology services spending patterns. Her research covers topics such as co-innovation, outcome-based services engagements, and the changing role of digital studios in services engagements.
Previous Work Experience
Prior to her current role as an analyst, Amanda was a researcher on Forrester's AD&D team. In that role, she contributed to Forrester's coverage of agile development and DevOps, led coverage on managing agile teams, and explored the intersection of design and customer experience with software development. She has extensive primary research experience, having served as research lead on Forrester Data's Global Business Technographics® Developer Survey and having conducted hundreds of research interviews with developers, VPs of technology, CIOs, and CTOs. In her role as a research associate, she contributed to Forrester's research on business technology transformation and technology market sizing.
Education
Amanda holds a B.A. in politics from Saint Anselm College.
Mark Van de Wiel is chief technology officer at HVR. Mark brings a strong background in data replication as well as real-time business intelligence and analytics to his role at HVR. Most recently, at Actian Corporation, Mark led a team of high performing solution architects. Prior to that, Mark developed extensions to Oracle’s GoldenGate replication product. Throughout his 15-plus year career, Mark has expanded his responsibilities from consultant to product management and business development. Mark holds an MSc in industrial engineering and management sciences from the Eindhoven University of Technology.
The combined $2.3 trillion package was the product of intense negotiations, from which Trump was largely absent until he surprised lawmakers of both parties by demanding bigger stimulus payments for individuals after the bill was already passed.
Trump said in the statement announcing the signing that the GOP Senate had agreed to vote on increasing the $600 individual payments and two other, unrelated matters dealing with social media and his unfounded allegations of voter fraud.
His delay in signing it means those aid payments will likely be later than Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had promised and may cut a week from the supplemental unemployment benefits that were part of the package and scheduled to end in March.
The virus relief package will likely be the last major legislation signed by Trump, whose re-election hopes were dashed in large part due to his handling of the pandemic.
President-elect Joe Biden has said he will push for even more stimulus after taking office early next year, but it remains unclear whether Republicans in Congress would go along. Control of the Senate will be determined by the outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan 5.
Lawmakers approved the government funding and additional relief at the last possible moment before they were set to leave Washington for a year-end break. Business leaders have called on Congress to pass more stimulus for months, saying that restaurants, theaters, mom-and-pop stores and airlines were being decimated by closures and restrictions as Covid-19 cases spiked in the U.S.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a relief deal on Sunday after more than a week of frantic talks sparked by a bipartisan group of senators who drafted their own compromise proposal and urged their leaders to act. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, representing the administration, also was involved in the talks.
Trump surprised even his fellow Republicans on Tuesday by tweeting a video saying that he wanted Congress to increase the size of stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, from the $600 in the bill Congress passed. He also complained about federal spending on foreign aid and international programs, even though those funds were allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process for funding the government.