April 22, 2020 3:25 a.m.
Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley called for further aid to American families on Tuesday, after the Senate passed an interim relief bill to provide additional emergency funding to small businesses, health care and coronavirus testing efforts.
A release from Merkley said the bill “provides urgently needed stopgap funding for our national response to the coronavirus threat”. He said it will “send out a desperately needed life raft” to small businesses and their employees, as well as to hospitals and health clinics, while also providing more resources to ramp up testing efforts around the country.
Merkley said Congress must immediately get to work on a bill that addresses significant gaps in the response so far. He said that includes:
*A nationwide moratorium on utility disconnections, an increase in food stamp benefits, and assistance for unemployed workers to afford COBRA health coverage.
*Help for state, local and tribal governments, as well as the U.S. Postal Service so that vital services can be maintained.
*Nationwide “mail-in and no excuse absentee voting”.
*A plan and funding for large-scale testing and contact tracing so the nation can be re-opened safely, as well as a path to ramp up domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity rapidly over the next year.
The U.S. House is expected to vote on the legislation on Thursday.