WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved on Wednesday an $8.3 billion bill to combat the spread of the new coronavirus and develop vaccines for the highly contagious disease, sending it to the Senate for final passage.
Reflecting the urgency among lawmakers to address the growing coronavirus crisis, the House voted 415-2 on the bill just hours after negotiators unveiled its contents.
A Senate vote was scheduled for Thursday.
It includes money to expand testing for the virus, which has infected at least 129 people in the United States. Two more deaths were reported on Wednesday, taking the U.S. toll to 11.
With the White House backing the effort, congressional leaders worked to win fast passage so that President Donald Trump could potentially sign it into law this week.
"We must quickly enact this legislation. Lives are at stake," House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, a Democrat, said in a statement.
The measure would provide far more money than the $2.5 billion initially sought by the Trump administration.
Shortly before the vote, the top four Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress received a classified briefing about contingency plans for Congress if there was a coronavirus outbreak in Washington.
An estimated 3 million people come through the Capitol Visitor Center each year.
Following the meeting, the lawmakers brushed off reporters' questions on whether plans were needed for Congress to meet somewhere else or whether public access to the Capitol might eventually be curtailed.
Representative Matt Gaetz, after a separate closed briefing for Republican lawmakers with Vice President Mike Pence about coronavirus preparations nationwide, compared the House chamber to a "petri dish" for incubating germs.
"We all fly in these dirty airports, we touch and selfie everyone we meet and then we congregate together," the Florida congressman said.
Later, during the vote, Gaetz was spotted sitting in the House chamber wearing a gas mask.
'NOT WHERE WE WANT TO BE'
Under the bill, over $3 billion would be devoted to research and development of coronavirus vaccines, test kits and therapeutics. No vaccines or treatments for the virus are currently in place, but patients can receive supportive care.
Gaetz said that while the United States was gearing up in the production of virus test kits, "we're not where we want to be. The vice president made that very clear that we've got to get more test assets in place."
In a bid to also help control the spread of the virus outside the United States, $1.25 billion would be available for international efforts.
The fast-spreading virus that emerged late last year in central China is now in some 80 countries. It has killed more than 3,000 worldwide and rattled financial markets.
State and local governments would receive $950 million to support their work in combating the respiratory disease.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, a Republican, called the bill "an aggressive and comprehensive response" to the crisis.
Included is more than $300 million to help cover costs of any vaccine for those who cannot afford it. The Department of Health and Human Services would be authorized to ensure vaccines' affordability in the commercial market.
Republicans cited a $7.8 billion cost for the bill, instead of $8.3 billion. That does not include $500 million authorized for a "telehealth" program for senior citizens.
Other provisions in the bill:
-- $2.2 billion in public health funding for prevention, preparedness and response, including the $950 million to bolster state and local government efforts.
-- Nearly $1 billion to help procure drugs and medical supplies
-- Small businesses affected by an outbreak could qualify for low-interest federal loans.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives took the historic step Tuesday of passing a resolution officially recognizing the "Armenian genocide," a move sure to anger Turkey amid already-heightened tensions with Washington.
Cheers and applause erupted when the chamber voted 405 to 11 in support of the symbolic resolution "affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide," a first for the US Congress, where similar measures with such direct language have been introduced for decades but never passed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was honored to join her colleagues "in solemn remembrance of one of the great atrocities of the 20th century: the systematic murder of more than 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman Empire."
The Armenians say the mass killings of their people from 1915 to 1917 amounted to genocide, a claim recognized by some 30 countries. Turkey strongly denies the accusation of genocide.
But Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, delivered bold remarks to the House, saying the truth of the "staggering crime" has been denied too often.
"Today, let us clearly state the facts on the floor of this House to be etched forever into the Congressional Record: the barbarism committed against the Armenian people was a genocide."
The House measure passed three weeks after Turkey invaded northeastern Syria and launched a broad assault on Kurdish-controlled areas that was made possible by the withdrawal of US troops.
Angry US lawmakers launched a one-two punch rebuking Turkey, with the genocide measure passing alongside a bill that slaps sanctions on Turkey for its incursion.
That bipartisan measure imposes sanctions on senior Turkish officials involved in the decision to launch the invasion and a Turkish bank with ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and requires the Trump Administration to penalize Turkey's procurement of a Russian-made missile-defense system.
Former vice president Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic White House hopeful, welcomed the Armenia vote, tweeting that "by acknowledging this genocide we honor the memory of its victims and vow: never again."
It was also welcomed outside the political realm. US television reality star Kim Kardashian, who has Armenian ancestry, tweeted about the vote to her 62 million followers.
"This is personal for me, and millions of Armenians who descended from genocide survivors," she said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives formally condemned Donald Trump on Tuesday for xenophobic attacks on four minority Democratic lawmakers and hostile language targeting immigrants, as the president pushed back at accusations of racism.
Top Republican leaders rallied around Trump, but four members of the president's party voted with the 235 Democrats to condemn him for "racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color."
One independent lawmaker also supported the measure, which takes aim at Trump's weekend tweets telling a group of progressive Democratic congresswomen of color to "go back" to other countries.
The resolution also takes the president to task for "referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as 'invaders.'"
Trump has a long history of political pandering to white suspicions about other ethnic groups, and the resolution criticizes him for "saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America."
Democrats hold a majority in the 435-member House but are outnumbered by Republicans in the Senate, where the resolution is unlikely to be considered.
The four congresswomen -- all but one of whom were born in the US -- are of Hispanic, Arab, Somali and African-American descent.
Trump stuck by the provocative comments Monday and again Tuesday.
"Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful. If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!" the president tweeted.
Democratic leaders denounced Trump's remarks, and rallied round the lawmakers -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.
Omar is the only one born outside the United States.
Slamming the "so-called vote" as a "Democrat con game," Trump urged his fellow Republicans not to "show 'weakness' and fall into their trap."
"Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don't have a Racist bone in my body!" Trump said.
"This should be a vote on the filthy language, statements and lies told by the Democrat Congresswomen, who I truly believe, based on their actions, hate our Country," the president wrote.
"Nancy Pelosi tried to push them away, but now they are forever wedded to the Democrat Party," Trump added, in a jab at the House speaker who has had a tenuous relationship with the four left-leaning first-term congresswomen.
Speaking on the House floor prior to the vote, Pelosi said: "Every single member of this institution, Democratic and Republican, should join us in condemning the president's racist tweets.
"To do anything less would be a shocking rejection of our values and a shameful abdication of our oath of office to protect the American people."
- 'All about politics' -
Trump's repeated attacks appear to be aimed at galvanizing his mostly white electoral base ahead of the 2020 presidential vote -- while also stoking divisions among his political opponents.
"See you in 2020!" said Trump, who before becoming president pushed the racist "birther" conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Ocasio-Cortez responded on Twitter to Trump's denial that he is a racist.
"You're right, Mr. President -- you don't have a racist bone in your body," she said. "You have a racist mind in your head, and a racist heart in your chest."
While some Republican members of Congress have condemned Trump's remarks, House Republican leaders closed ranks behind the president.
"This is all about politics," said House Republican minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, said "the president is not a racist."
"From the president to the speaker, to the freshmen members of the House, all of us have a responsibility to elevate the public discourse," McConnell said. "Our words do matter."
Immediately after the House vote a Democratic congressman, Al Green of Texas, filed articles of impeachment against Trump.
Dozens of other Democratic members of the House have reportedly called for an impeachment inquiry to be opened against the president but Pelosi, the House speaker, has said she does not favor such a move at the moment.
bur-it/ec
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump bitterly attacked top Democrat Nancy Pelosi on Sunday and she again insisted that he end the government shutdown before border security talks can begin, but there were hints of possible movement.
Trump lashed out on Twitter a day after Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, dismissed as a "non-starter" his offer to extend temporary protection to about a million immigrants in return for $5.7 billion for the wall he wants on the Mexican border to fulfill a signature campaign promise.
Government shutdowns are a disruptive political ritual that have occurred in various administrations and are almost unique to the American system. But this one is the longest on record. It has left about 800,000 federal workers unpaid -- among them airport security officers, FBI agents, museum workers, and Coast Guard members.
"Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat," the president tweeted. "She is so petrified of the 'lefties' in her party that she has lost control."
It was Trump's most direct attack on Pelosi since the partial government shutdown began, and appeared to reflect a mounting sense of frustration.
Pointedly ignoring his personal comments, Pelosi on Twitter emphasized the need to end the impasse, which has inflicted increasing pain after one month, with some government employees having to turn to food banks or local charities to get by.
"Reopen the government, let workers get their paychecks and then we can discuss how we can come together to protect the border. #EndTheShutdown," she tweeted.
'GOOD-FAITH COMPROISE'
While Pelosi and other Democrats dismissed Trump's offer, Republicans insisted that it represented actual movement by the president.
Vice President Mike Pence, who has been leading the administration's contacts with Congress, said the Senate would put the proposal to a vote as early as Tuesday. He called it "a good-faith compromise."
The planned vote also reflects a shift by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. He insisted previously that he would not take up any shutdown bill unless both Trump and Democratic leaders backed it.
"In a very real sense, what President Trump did here was he set the table for a deal," Pence said on "Fox News Sunday."
The bill's fate was far from clear. Republicans hope to lure the votes of a few Democrats from Trump-friendly states to reach the 60 votes needed, but they may lose some hard-line conservatives in the process.
MOST BLAME REPUBLICANS
The Trump administration -- increasingly blamed by Americans for the shutdown -- is trying to balance demands of those hard-liners and Democrats who adamantly oppose spending the $5.7 billion Trump wants for a wall.
Trump has regularly warned of what he says is a serious criminal threat from undocumented migrants entering the country, which is grappling with a surge in arrivals by families and children who say they are fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.
Democrats have offered more than $2 billion for a range of other border-security measures.
They assailed Trump's new offer as cynical, noting that it was the president who -- by moving earlier to end the DACA program protecting 700,000 young immigrants and to expel about 300,000 others in a separate program -- had placed in jeopardy many of those for whom he now offers temporary protection.
But anti-immigrant voices also attacked Trump's offer as tantamount to amnesty for the undocumented -- a toxic concept for many conservatives.
"No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA," Trump said in another tweet. DACA was former president Barack Obama's program to shield undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children.
Trump said that there would be "no big push" to remove the 11 million people in the country illegally, before warning: 'but be careful, Nancy!"
His immigration crackdown has not stanched the influx of migrants, and a new group of about 400 Hondurans -- the fourth since October 13 -- headed north on Saturday, officials there said.
Still, as the costs of the US shutdown mounted, both sides in the standoff appeared to be casting about cautiously for a road ahead.
"The vote this week (in the Senate) is not to pass the bill," said Senator James Lankford, a Republican, "It's to open up and say, can we debate this? Can we amend it? Can we make changes? Let's find a way to get the government open."
Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, said that "I would not rule out a wall in certain circumstances."
He suggested that Democrats were amenable to negotiating if Trump would stop demonizing the party and its leaders and provide assurances that he would not suddenly shift positions.
"The notion that we have come from a (focus on a) wall to some other thing is moving it along," he told ABC's "This Week," "but we have to sit down and talk."
Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who plans to seek the presidency in 2020, told CNN it was urgent that both sides "come together and have a real conversation and hash out the differences."
But Representative James Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, insisted that the government must first be reopened.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK -- Disappointed with President Donald Trump's Republican Party, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday he will donate millions to Democrats in hopes they win back control of the US House of Representatives.
Analysts predict Democrats have a strong shot at regaining control of the US House in November's mid-term elections, although the Cook Political Report says Republicans have seen a recent uptick in their overall chances of maintaining their majority.
Democrats would need to flip 24 seats to seize the chamber.
"Republicans in Congress have had almost two years to prove they could govern responsibly. They failed," Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman like the president, said on the website of his Bloomberg news service.
Bloomberg, 76, lately has edged into the center-left realm of US politics, calling for environmental protection and gun control.
"Congress has essentially stopped acting as a co-equal branch of government, by failing to engage in the kind of oversight of the law that the Constitution requires and the public expects," he charged, adding "too many have been absolutely feckless."
As such, the historically bipartisan and independent operator said he would support Democrats' efforts to win control of the US House.
Bloomberg said he had differences with opposition Democrats "especially those who seek to make this election about impeachment. Nothing could be more irresponsible."
Still, Bloomberg faulted Republican lawmakers for not upholding checks and balances that exist "to safeguard ethics, prevent the abuse of power and preserve the rule of law."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
