President Biden signed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package into law on Thursday, setting in motion a vast effort on the part of his administration to implement one of the largest stimulus measures in U.S. history.
The bill includes $1,400 payments, an extension of jobless benefits, and a child tax credit that is expect to lift millions out of poverty.
Mr Biden said the relief package will rebuild “the backbone of this country”.
The spending bill, one of the largest in US history, passed Congress without a single Republican supporter.
Mr Biden’s signing ceremony for the new law on Thursday comes on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) declaration of the Covid-19 crisis as a global pandemic, as the nation’s death toll climbs to more than 520,000 American lives lost within a year.
“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation – working people, middle class folks, the people who build the country – a fighting chance,” he said from the Oval Office on Thursday before signing the legislation.
“That’s what the essence of it is,” he said.
