Radio Recap – Breaking: Senate Reaches a Stimulus Deal. But What’s In It?

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
March 25, 2020

3 min read

Public Policy

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There’s breaking news from Capitol Hill. A deal on the stimulus has reportedly been reached, but what exactly is in it?

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed the Senate stimulus package deal that was announced late last night.

The latest of what we think we know is that the White House and the Senate have struck a deal this morning on the two trillion dollar Coronavirus relief bill. Now, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement of this has been described as tepid.

We’ve been on top of this bill since it came out and are following it very closely. As we warned you could happen, there was a snag in the stimulus deal and that was over abortion providers. This came out about six o’clock last night. There was a fight over abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, as Democrats want abortion providers to be eligible for aid through the small business portion of the bill. We believe that this has likely been removed from the bill.

I asked ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett if we knew for sure. Thann said:

No, we don’t have language yet. This is one of the provisions that we actually flagged for The Hill, among other people. In a nutshell the Left wanted Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to be able to access the small business loans, the ones that were intended to meet payroll. That was the provision that got changed. I’m hearing from multiple sources on The Hill, that it has been corrected. I would just say that I’ve got about three thousand pages worth of bills sitting right here that I’ve been through that we found problems in, I want to see the actual language and confirm that it’s fixed before I tell you that it is.

I also asked Thann about when the vote will take place. He shared the following:

We don’t know. They are literally drafting the language as we speak and we have to have that language, obviously, before there’s a vote. The expectation would be that it would happen today.

As always, we at the ACLJ will continue to keep you updated as things unfold. We invite you to join us in prayer for our nation and the people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can listen to the entire episode complete with further analysis of Senate action on the stimulus package here.