President Signs COVID-19 Relief Legislation
Posted March 12, 2021
President Biden signed an unprecedented $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, into law on March 11 after Congress passed the bill without Republican support. The Senate passed its version of the bill on a narrow, party-line 50-49 vote in the early hours of March 6, and the House of Representatives approved this version shortly after on March 10 on a 219-212 vote. The Senate had made changes from an earlier version passed by the House, including narrowing the eligibility for direct payments and removing provisions that would raise the federal minimum wage.
A large portion of the funding in this COVID-19 relief package will be used to distribute $1,400 in direct payments to a large number of individuals and households and $300 a week in supplemental pandemic-related unemployment aid through September 6. The legislation also includes key spending provisions including:
- $360 billion for state and local aid, $10 billion more than the original House package.
- $160 billion for COVID vaccines and testing, including $46 billion to expand COVID-19 testing, tracing, and surveillance and $7.6 billion for Community Health Centers.
- $39.5 billion for institutions of higher education distributed through Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF) and available through September 2023, with 91 percent directed to non-profit institutions of higher education.
- Over $1 billion to expand research efforts at select federal agencies, including
- $600 million for the National Science Foundation to spend on research relief or research on COVID-19 and broader pandemic impacts,
- $150 million for NIST’s Manufacturing Institutes,
- $100 million for the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to carry out research related to addressing learning loss caused by the coronavirus.
- A new tax provision not included in the original House package that would make student loan forgiveness tax-free through January 1, 2026 and would cover government-held federal student loans and private student loans. While the aid package does not provide any student loan relief, this would already put in place tax benefits if Congress through legislation or President Biden through executive order were to forgive student loans in the future.
Sources and Additional Information:
- The full final version of the bill can be found here.