Senate passes $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. Here’s what’s next.
Moderates secured key changes in the final package. March 6, 2021, 7:49 PM• 7 min readAfter more than 25 hours of debate and votes, Senate Democrats passed a sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill Saturday aimed at helping lower-income Americans, small businesses, schools, the hard-hit hospitality and tourism industries, as well as state and local governments — with aid also going to boost front-line pandemic work, vaccines, testing and tracing plans.The bill passed on a party-line vote and will now head back over to the House, which will have to reconcile several key changes before it heads to President Joe Biden’s desk just days before unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans.House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer jubilantly celebrated the bill’s passage on Saturday afternoon, hailing it as “perhaps the most significant bill to help the poor and working people in decades.”Schumer also praised Biden for his leadership, saying he put together “a great plan.”“I said from the beginning, we were going to power through. We’re not going to let anything stop us until we got the job done,” the New York Democrat said. “Unity, unity, unity. That’s how we got this done.”Biden praised the passage of the “historic” bill in
