Center for Popular Democracy Network Statement on Proposed COVID Relief Package

Today, after months of inaction and obstruction by Leader McConnell and the GOP, Congress reached a deal to approve a modest COVID relief package. For families struggling through this crisis, this package offers some important support, but falls woefully short of what people truly need to recover. What was agreed on today should be understood as only an emergency measure to help millions of people survive through the holidays.

While we are still analyzing the legislation to understand all its pieces, we do know this package includes two important components to provide modest economic relief to families: $600 in survival checks (direct cash payments) to adults and children, including mixed- status families who were wrongly left out of previous relief; and $300 in continued pandemic unemployment insurance for 11 weeks. These two measures are essential for families struggling to buy food and pay rent, but the amounts offer just a small fraction of what it will take to support families and get the economy to recover.

This deal comes after months of organizing by workers, small-business owners, families and communities most impacted by COVID-19; and after more than 300,000 people have lost their lives and 20 million people have lost their jobs. Without this permanent and relentless pressure by people, Senator McConnell and the GOP would simply have continued to leave millions of families without cash in their pockets, standing on food lines and facing evictions. We want to take a moment to thank the members of congress who fought hard to make sure that survival checks and pandemic unemployment insurance would be included in the deal.

The proposed deal fortunately does not grant impunity to corporations that put the lives of their workers and customers at risk, despite McConnell's efforts to give years of protections from liability to corporations. But we are extremely concerned by its lack of state and local aid for governments, which are struggling to provide fundamental services including education and public transportation, control the number of COVID-19 cases or restore economic activity.

We need a relief package that puts people first and makes the unemployment system and the economy more equitable and inclusive for the Black and Brown workers who have been impacted most deeply by the pandemic. And we call upon the Biden administration to take up this mandate. As we close this new year, Congress and the incoming Biden-Harris administration will need to get to work immediately on a COVID-19 relief package that meets the scale of the public health and economic crisis, centers the needs of those most impacted and ensures everyone is included.

After nearly a year of suffering under the Trump administration and GOP's refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic -- and losing 300,000 lives, we demand a relief that puts working people first and meets the scale of the crisis. This should include a package that decreases the number of people detained in jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities and increases financial resources to protect the health of those who remain incarcerated. It should include healthcare, recurring survival checks, and unemployment benefits that help all people, regardless of immigration status. And it should include debt cancellation, a moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and shut-offs.

We will continue to fight for a relief package that includes the vital resources we all need to live, and continue to demand our representatives fight alongside us.