Defeated President Donald Trump hit the links again this morning after he refused to sign a $900 billion legislative relief package that resulted in millions of Americans losing their unemployment benefits.
Trump spent his third day at his Trump International Golf Course after arriving in Palm Beach, the location of his Mar-a-Lago residence, on Wednesday night.
Trump has tried to blame China for the financial strain felt by Americans but he is the one who refused to sign a legislative deal negotiated by Republicans, his administration and Democrats.
He wants he size of the relief checks to be tripled, an 11th hour demand that has thrown the fate of the legislation in limbo.
A second deadline looms: if Trump doesn’t sign the bill the government will shut down at midnight on Monday.
Vice President Mike Pence is also out of Washington D.C. this week, spending the holiday season in Vail, Colorado.
He won’t return to the nation’s capitol until after New Year’s Eve.
Trump on Saturday repeated calls for stimulus checks to be boosted to $2,000 instead of the $600 promised by the current bill, which was overwhelmingly passed by Congress last Tuesday.
On Saturday night, unemployment benefits lapsed for 14 million Americans because of Trump’s refusal.
According to the Brookings Institute, 10 million unemployed workers will lose compensation immediately from Saturday while an additional 3.8 million workers are at risk of losing benefits within weeks.
The 5,593-page legislation, which was flown Mar-a-Lago on Friday to await Trump’s signature, would extend the number of weeks people can stay on two key pandemic unemployment programs and increase weekly benefits by $300 for all through mid-March.
Trump sat on the sidelines during negotiations only to emerge after the deal was done and passed by Congress to complain the stimulus checks for Americans were not large enough.
The $600 figure was negotiated by his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
But Trump has not acknowledged his own involvement in the negotiations.
‘$2000 + $2000 plus other family members. Not $600. Remember, it was China’s fault!’ he tweeted on Saturday.
The end-of-year COVID relief and spending bill had been considered a done deal before Trump’s sudden objections.
It remained in limbo early Sunday morning as the president continued to demand larger COVID relief checks and complained about ‘pork’ spending.
Washington has been reeling since Trump turned on the deal after it had won sweeping approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House had assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.
Instead, he assailed the bill’s plan to provide $600 COVID relief checks to most Americans – insisting it should be $2,000.
Democrats had pushed for larger stimulus check but even with Trump’s support, House Republicans swiftly rejected that idea during a rare Christmas Eve session.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to try again tomorrow when the House is in session.
Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, calculated that 11 million people would lose aid from the programs immediately without additional relief from Saturday.
Millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits within weeks.
However, Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the number may be closer to 14 million because joblessness has spiked since Thanksgiving.
About 9.5 million people had been relying on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that expired altogether Saturday.
That program made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, gig workers and others who were normally not eligible.
After receiving their last checks, those recipients would not be able to file for more aid, Stettner said.
Congress had last week approved that these payments could continue until March 14, with an added $300-per-week federal boost for laid-off workers.
Yet Trump let the program end as he remained focused on stimulus checks.
While payments could be received retroactively, any gap would mean more hardship and uncertainty for Americans who had already grappled with bureaucratic delays, often depleting much of their savings to stay afloat while waiting for payments to kick in.
In addition to the unemployment benefits that have already lapsed, Trump’s continued refusal to sign the bill would lead to the expiration of eviction protections and put on hold a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters, as well as money for cash-starved transit systems and for vaccine distribution.
The relief was also attached to a $1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government operating through September, which would mean that failing to sign it by midnight Tuesday would trigger a federal shutdown.
President-elect Joe Biden had called on Trump to sign the bill immediately as the midnight Saturday deadline neared for two federal programs providing unemployment aid.
‘It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don´t know if they´ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump´s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,’ Biden said in a statement.
He accused Trump of an ‘abdication of responsibility’ that has ‘devastating consequences.’