WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders partly restoring enhanced unemployment payments to the tens of millions of Americans who lost jobs in the coronavirus pandemic, as the United States marked a grim milestone of five million cases.
Negotiations broke down this week between the White House and top Democrats in Congress about how best to help Americans cope with the heavy human and economic toll of the crisis, which has killed more than 160,000 people across the country.
Trump said on Saturday that the orders would provide an extra $400 per week in unemployment payments, less than the $600 per week passed earlier in the crisis. Some of the measures were likely to face legal challenges, as the US Constitution gives Congress authority over federal spending.
"This is the money they need, this is the money they want, this gives them an incentive to go back to work," the Republican president said of the lower payments. He said 25 percent of it would be paid by states, whose budgets have been hard hit by the crisis.
Republicans have argued that higher payments were a disincentive for unemployed Americans to try to return to work, though economists, including Federal Reserve officials, disputed that assertion. (Aljazeera)