US averts horrendous ending of '20 as Trump finally signs off $2.3 trillion bill

• Financial

Late on Sunday, amid intense pressure from bi-partisan congressional lawmakers, the departing US President Donald Trump had bent his knees and signed off a $2.3 trillion bill. If truth is to be told, Trump Administration had been heading towards an acrimonious end to a pandemic-battered 2020 as the incumbent US President Donald Trump’s repeated refusal to approve a $2.3 trillion fiscal package that includes a $892 billion in pandemic stimulus bill, had been leading to a ludicrous pandemonium in the US Congress, nonetheless, late on Sunday, Trump has finally signed off the $2.3 trillion fiscal package as beforementioned, offering a lifeline to millions of Americans desperately looking forward to state unemployment benefits while preventing a shutdown of federal agencies due to a lack of funding.

In point of fact, the departing US President Donald Trump who would hand over the Oval Office to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden by January 20, had been in the crosshairs of bipartisan Congressional lawmakers following his refusal to sign off the $2.3 trillion bill passed in the Congress last week, while the Congress had also voted to reject Trump’s proposal to heighten up a one-off stimulus check to $2,000 from a planned $600 on Sunday, leading to a tempestuous deadlock that in effect would have nullified state unemployment benefits for more than 1.4 million Americans.

Trump finally signs off $2.3 trillion bill

Besides, since the package had included a $1.4 trillion in expenses aimed at supporting the Government agencies, had not the bill been signed off before Monday, there would have been a partial shutdown of a number of Government agencies starting from Tuesday.

Concomitantly, as a raft of US lawmakers had expressed deep discontent over the pandemic relief bill, but had also urged for an approval in order to avert a chaotic fiscal landscape, pressure was mounting over a vengeful US President, heavily embittered by his loss in the November 3 Presidential election, to sign off the bill in order to turn it into a law.

Meanwhile, piling up pressures further over the Republican President Donald Trump to approve the $2.3 trillion fiscal package, Senator Pat Toomey had said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” shortly before Trump agreed to sign off the bill, "..

.The US President must sign off the bill now ... I understanld the president would like to send bigger checks to everybody. I think what he ought to do is sign this bill and then make the case. Congress can pass another bill. You don’t get everything you want, even if you are the president of the United States”.

After month-long qualms, bipartisan lawmakers had agreed to a pandemic stimulus package last weekend, while a last-minute disapproval from Donald Trump had surprised many including some of his closest allies in the White House likes of US Treasury’s Mnuchin who had backed the bill.