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Joe Biden will sign a pair of executive orders on Friday aimed at providing immediate relief to American families grappling with the economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic and extending safety protections for federal workers.
The first action targets food insecurity, by developing nutritional programs for low-income families and children. The ordinance would also attempt to clarify a rule ensuring that unemployed Americans would still be eligible for unemployment insurance if they refused work that endangered their health.
The Second Order seeks to expand protections for federal workers by restoring collective bargaining rights and promoting a federal minimum wage of $ 15. To do so, Biden will ask agencies to conduct a review of federal workers earning less than $ 15 an hour and develop recommendations to increase their wages.
“The American people cannot afford to wait,” Brian Deese, Biden’s chief economic adviser, said on a call with reporters. “Many are hanging by a thread, they need help and we are committed to doing all we can to provide that help as quickly as possible.”
The latest management actions come a day after a Labor Department report showed jobless claims remained at historically high levels, with 900,000 Americans claiming unemployment benefits last week. The numbers reflect the scale of the economic challenges Biden has inherited, amid a resurgence of the coronavirus this winter.
Friday’s actions are part of a blitz of executive orders and directives Biden has taken since assuming the presidency.
Hours after his inauguration, Biden signed an executive order extending a federal break on evictions until the end of March, a move that will protect millions of Americans struggling to pay rent amid the pandemic. He also ordered federal agencies to extend their moratorium on foreclosures on federally guaranteed mortgages and called on the Education Department to extend its freeze on federal student loan repayments until the end of September.
On Thursday, he unveiled a national “wartime” Covid-19 strategy to increase vaccine production, create guidelines to reopen schools and businesses and impose new mask-wearing requirements.
Biden has long argued that economic recovery is tied to tackling the coronavirus, a drastically different approach from his predecessor who urged states to lift restrictions even as infections soared.
The centerpiece of Biden’s plan to alleviate economic crises is a $ 1.9 billion emergency relief program called the American Rescue Plan, which includes $ 1,400 in direct payments to Americans, an extension of temporarily high unemployment benefits. and billions of dollars for a national immunization program.
Already Republicans are opposing the cost of the legislation, raising doubts whether Biden will be able to attract bipartisan support as he had hoped. Several Republicans have questioned the need for an additional stimulus package weeks after passing a $ 900 billion coronavirus relief bill.
Deese stressed that the president’s unilateral decrees offered only emergency relief and did not replace the action of Congress.
“These actions are concrete and will provide immediate support to hard-hit families,” he said. “They are not enough and it takes a lot, a lot more.”
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