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.
Scott Beeman joined Aflac as senior vice president; president of Premier Life, Absence and Disability Solutions (PLADS) in 2020, responsible for leading all aspects of Aflac’s PLADS business. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the insurance and health care industry, Scott is a visionary with a proven track record of channeling his passion and creativity not only into driving revenue and profitable growth, but also into instituting scalable and sustainable infrastructures and leading the pace and progress of restructurings, product development, and organizational change management programs to realize growth and create new value.
Prior to joining Aflac, Scott was president and chief operating officer of Benefit Harbor Insurance Services, LLC. He also previously served as head of Business Strategy, Operations and IT for the Life, Disability and Absence Management program at Zurich, responsible for the creation of the overall strategic value proposition and execution of its life insurance and disability operations with emphasis on the growth of the group life insurance business. Prior to joining Zurich, Scott held numerous leadership positions with Aetna, including head of Life and Long Term Care Businesses and chief executive officer of Aetna Workforce Availability, where he successfully demonstrated the ability to launch and exponentially grow both new and well established businesses. Prior to joining Aetna, Scott held positions of increasing responsibility in various sectors of the health care industry. He previously co-founded his own company, specializing in Internet-based information systems for the high-tech medical equipment sector, which he successfully negotiated for sale in 2001.
Within his local community, Scott serves on the board of The Cove Center for Grieving Children. He holds a Bachelor of Science in health policy and management from Providence College in Rhode Island and earned a certificate of professional development in executive leadership from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Marla Willner is the head of commercial credit management and strategic Initiatives for TD Bank. She is also executive sponsor of the bank's Women in Leadership Employee Group.
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.