President signs bill with $600 aid checks

President Donald Trump on Sunday signed a bill that will send $600-per-person stimulus payments to most American households, add $300 a week to unemployment benefits and fund additional Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Congress was to take up a measure Monday that would increase the stimulus payments to $2,000 per person.

The $900 billion coronavirus relief package also extends the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures into the spring.

The president had threatened to veto the bill including the $600 payments, a compromise between Democrats who had wanted something closer to $2,000 and Republicans who balked at the size of the spending measure. Trump said he wanted the payments to be $2,000 and called the bill containing the smaller payments "a disgrace."

"I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work," Trump said Sunday, "add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more."

The original bill had included new criminal penalties for copyright violations related to online streaming.

"Additionally," Trump said, "Congress has promised that Section 230, which so unfairly benefits Big Tech at the expense of the American people, will be reviewed and either be terminated or substantially reformed."

Monday's debate will test a lame duck Republican president's power in a duel with members of his own party. It comes less than two weeks before pivotal Georgia runoffs for the U.S. Senate, which could decide which party controls the upper chamber for at least the first two years of the Joe Biden presidency.

The payments to individuals are for the full $600 per adult and dependents up to age 16 in households making up to $75,000 per year. Beyond $75,000, recipients will see the aid reduced.

The $300 unemployment enhancement comes just as earlier jobless pay support was ending. As of October, more than 2,100 St. Mary people were unemployed, according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

The bill signed Sunday also includes another $280 billion to reopen the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans through local banks to companies that keep workers on their payrolls.

Employers in St. Mary borrowed more than $88 million in the first round of PPP and identified more than 7,000 jobs that were protected.