The Vermont senator lamented Trump’s unwillingness to avert catastrophe by signing the compromise relief bill.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday led progressive lawmakers in condemning President Donald Trump’s refusal to approve a $900 billion Covid-19 relief and spending bill as unemployment coverage expired for millions of Americans on Saturday night as a result of his intransigence. “What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning. “Many millions of people are losing their extended unemployment benefits. They’re going to be evicted from their apartments because the eviction moratorium is ending.” Although Congress on Monday approved a compromise relief bill that would have temporarily averted catastrophic expiration of critical unemployment and other benefits — including an extension of the federal eviction moratorium — during the deadliest period of the pandemic, Trump declined to sign the measure into law, blasting its $600 direct payments to Americans as “a disgrace” and calling for $2,000 stimulus checks instead. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — one of only two House Democrats to vote against the bill — also called its $600 payment “woefully inadequate.
