The president-elect proposed increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. President-elect Joe Biden proposed an additional $400 for unemployment benefits as part of the new economic stimulus to mitigate the pandemic.
The amount increases by $100 the additional money given weekly to the unemployed that was extended in December.
The Cares Act, one of the first pandemic stimuli, even provided an additional $600 in unemployment benefits.
New Stimulus Check
Biden’s proposed new stimulus plan has a total value of $1.9 billion. It will be considered by Congress to provide millions of dollars in additional resources for vaccination and testing.
The plan includes a round of direct payments of $1,400 to taxpayers. This is in addition to the December $600 for a total of $2,000, which is what Democrats have been asking for for months.
Increase in federal minimum wage to $15 per hour
It also allocates $160 billion for the country’s vaccination program, $20 billion for dose distribution, and $50 billion for testing.
It also proposes to invest $170 billion in schools and institutions of higher education, including $130 billion to ensure that educational institutions can safely reopen despite the pandemic.
The proposal calls for increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and provides $350 billion in emergency funding for state and local governments, reports said.