US jobless benefit cut-off pushes millions to financial cliff-edge

Emergency unemployment benefits of roughly 14 million ended on Saturday

When the US Congress passed a pandemic aid Bill on Monday, Meghan Meyer, a single mom from Lincoln, Nebraska, thought she would get some respite from the daily struggle to feed and house her two kids during an unprecedented health and economic crisis.

But the next day President Donald Trump declared the long-awaited relief package "a disgrace" and said he would not sign it into law, decrying some of its spending measures while also demanding it include bigger stimulus checks for most Americans.

By the weekend, he had refused to budge.

That leaves Meyer, who has been on unpaid medical leave from her customer service job at retailer TJ Maxx since May because she is at risk of severe Covid, facing a financial cliff edge.

She is one of roughly 14 million Americans whose emergency unemployment benefits, introduced by Congress when the pandemic took hold in March, ended on Saturday.

The new relief bill would extend through mid-March programs that support self-employed workers and those unemployed for more than half a year. It also gives an additional $300 a week through mid-March to all those receiving jobless benefits, some 20.3 million people. And it extends through January a moratorium on evictions due to expire on December 31 and provides $25 billion in emergency rental assistance.

Many economists agree that the aid is insufficient and more will be needed after Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January. 20. Biden has called the bill a "downpayment." Negotiated by Trump's own Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the Republican Party's congressional leaders, the bill has been flown to the president's Florida beach resort where he is staying for the holiday, awaiting his possible signature. In tweets on Saturday, Trump signaled he was still unwilling to sign the bill, despite pleas from lawmakers to show goodwill at Christmas time. Trump had not criticised the aid package's terms before it went before the House of Representatives and the Senate for a vote.

As pandemic lockdowns hammered the economy in March, Congress rushed through emergency unemployment benefits as part of the $2 trillion CARES Act. At the time, lawmakers did not envisage the aid would be needed beyond Christmas and, until last weekend, they could not reach a deal to extend the benefits.

Meyer has watched her benefits dwindle over the past six months after a CARES program that gave her $600 a week in supplemental jobless payments expired in July and she went on to exhaust her allowance of Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation.

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