WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden told said Thursday the country needed to move now and fast with "The American Rescue Plan," measures he said would address the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout.
“A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight and there’s no time to waste,” Biden said in an evening address.
Six days before his inauguration, Biden announced a nearly $2 trillion economic and healthcare relief package, a “two-step plan to build a bridge to the other side of the crisis we face, to a better, stronger, more secure America,” he said.
Biden's proposal includes $1,400 stimulus payments, an increase in federal unemployment benefits to $400 weekly and a new minimum wage of $15 an hour.
“Direct cash payments, extended unemployment insurance, rent relief, food assistance, keeping essential frontline workers on the job, aid to small businesses,” Biden said of the various elements of the plan.
As for fighting the pandemic, Biden proposes to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days with a massive expansion in testing and aid to public schools to help them re-open safely.
“The more people we vaccinate and the sooner we do it, the sooner we can save lives and put this pandemic behind us,” said Biden.
To do that, Biden said, will require a country that’s united. His proposal comes at a time when many Americans, including lawmakers, are divided over the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
“The only way we can do it is to come together, to come together as fellow Americans, as neighbors, as the United States of America,” said Biden.