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President Biden signed two executive orders on Friday, one of which would increase federal food aid and streamline the delivery of stimulus controls, as the president tries to stabilize the economy without help from Congress amid the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
“We need to act now,” Biden said in remarks before signing the orders. “We cannot, do not want to let people go hungry.”
Mr. Biden proposed a $ 1.9 trillion relief plan in Congress, but it is unclear whether he will garner enough Republican support to switch to a bipartisan basis. Until Congress is able to pass another relief bill, Mr. Biden’s actions are designed as interim measures to stabilize the economy.
Some Republicans have questioned whether there is still a need for a second, larger relief bill after Congress passed a $ 900 billion bill in December. But in his remarks on Friday, Biden said the latest relief bill was just a “down payment.”
“We need more action, and we need to act quickly,” Biden said. “We are in a national emergency. We have to act like we are in a national emergency. So we have to act with everything we have.”
In first order, Mr Biden calls on the US Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) advantages – commonly called food stamps – by 15%. Congress recently passed a $ 1 trillion relief bill that increased SNAP’s maximum profit by 15%, but that did not help the 40% of SNAP beneficiaries who were already maxing out. Biden’s order tells USDA to “consider issuing new guidelines that would allow states to increase SNAP emergency allocations for those who need them most,” a fact sheet says provided by the White House, which would mean an additional 12 million people get enhanced benefits.
The order would also increase Pandemic-EBT, an electronic debit card program for students who qualify for free or discounted meals at school. Mr. Biden orders the USDA “to consider issuing new guidelines increasing P-EBT benefits by about 15% to accurately reflect the costs of missing meals and make it easier for households to claim benefits.” According to the White House, this could provide a family with three children with an additional $ 100 per month in aid.
Under the order, the USDA would also reassess the Economic Food Plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits. According to the White House file, the plan “is overwhelmed by the economic realities that most struggling households face when trying to buy and prepare healthy food.”
Due to the economic fallout from the pandemic, more American families struggled to put food on the table These last months. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research institute, reported that nearly one in five adults with children said their family sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the past seven days, according to data collected from USDA between December. 9-21. Black and Latino adults are also more than twice as likely to report that their families do not have enough to eat as white families.
Increasing SNAP benefits would also help the struggling economy. During an economic downturn, more people tend to sign up for SNAP. These registrants then spend that federal aid, which in turn generates income for those who produce, transport and sell the food. A 2019 analysis by the USDA’s Economic Research Service found that a $ 1 billion increase in SNAP benefits could increase the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by $ 1.54 billion and support nearly of 14,000 jobs.
Mr Biden’s order also aims to streamline the delivery of stimulus checks for those who have yet to receive their direct payments. Congress passed a bill to provide $ 600 in direct payments to Americans earning below a certain threshold last month. Biden, who supports the increase in payments to $ 2,000, will also ask Congress to pass a law providing for additional direct checks of $ 1,400.
Mr. Biden also issued a second executive order aimed at improving the bargaining power and protections of federal workers, and ordered the Office of Personnel Management to develop recommendations to increase the minimum wage for federal employees to $ 15. ‘hour.
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