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.
Jonathan Mondillo, Head of Municipals, abrdn
Amar Patel is director of cost segregation at KBKG. Previously, he spent 15 years at a Big Four accounting firm and one year at Centiv LLC, focusing on various specialty tax products including cost recovery solutions and research and development tax credits. In the past 16 years of practice, he has specialized in cost segregation and large fixed asset depreciation reviews for purposes of identifying federal, state and property tax benefits.
Serhat Guven is Willis Towers Watson’s Insurance Consulting & Technology Global Leader for P&C Pricing, Product, Claims, and Underwriting propostion. He and his team are responsible for the delivery of consulting services and technology solutions that are uniquely designed to help insurers respond to significant industry trends; as well as provide carriers support in core areas that are fundamental for effective business management and profitability.
Prior to his current role, Serhat Guven was Willis Towers Watson’s Regional Line of Business Leader for the Americas. In this capacity he was responsible for go to market strategy and development of the full range of consulting services and software solutions to insurance companies. Before joining Willis Towers Watson, Serhat spent nine years in a variety of positions at United Services Automobile Association (USAA), where he was the technical expert on multivariate pricing, demand modeling, classification and tiering analysis, territorial ratemaking, and data management.
Serhat’s primary area of expertise is developing advanced analytics solutions for a wide variety of insurance applications.
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.