US Congress approves $484 billion bill for Coronavirus relief aid

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 388 to 5 on Thursday to pass a $484 billion bill to expand federal loans to small businesses impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic. The bill that obtained it's approval unanimously by the US Senate on Tuesday after bipartisan negotiations with the White House is awaiting its final approval from US President Donald Trump In a move to carry the legislation forward, Democrat member and US Representative Hakeem Jeffries said that its the coronavirus pandemic is ravaging America by causing thousand to die and impacting many small businesses "Millions of Americans are unemployed. Rome is burning. We can either put out the fire or watch our great nation go down in flames,"  Jeffries said. The emergency spending package adds approximately $320bn to a programme designed to help small businesses keep employees on their payrolls until the US economy can be reopened again. The bill also includes $75bn for hospitals hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and another $60bn for economic disaster assistance, as well as $11bn for states, according to a summary of the legislation. The legislation allocates $25bn for testing for the coronavirus that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats sought, and calls on the Trump administration to define a strategy to provide nationwide testing focused on boosting capacity by increasing the availability of testing supplies. However, last month Congress provided $350bn for small businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program, but the money was quickly exhausted by overwhelming demand. The programme was designed to help companies with fewer than 500 employees, several larger companies found ways to obtain funds through their banks in the first round. The new bill seeks to compensate for inequities in the US financial system by channeling $60bn of the new funding through community lenders in under-banked neighborhoods and rural areas. More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs since the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to shut down.