The US Senate and White House have reached a deal on a $2 trillion stimulus package for the US economy and millions of Americans ravaged by the coronavirus crisis, according to the Republican lawmaker in the early hours of Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “At last, we have a deal, while citing the massive “wartime level of investment into our nation.”
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that he wants to loosen the coronavirus lockdown in the country and restart the economy within three weeks, calling social distancing measures too disruptive.
Social distancing and quarantine measures have been instituted across much of the United States, with stay-at-home orders for more than a third of the population, bringing the world’s biggest economy to an abrupt halt.
The plunge in activity and warnings of recession or even depression are a brutal reversal for what was until a few weeks ago a humming economy, with record low unemployment.
More than 600 people have died from the new coronavirus in the United States, while the number of confirmed cases has now passed 50,000, a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University showed on Tuesday.
Last week, the US leader announced a national state of emergency, freeing up $50 billion in federal funds for the battle against the coronavirus pandemic as he vowed to “vastly” ramp up testing capacity.