SAN ANTONIO – (Update: The livestream is over. Visit KSAT.com for more upcoming livestreams.)
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris along with members of Congress will talk Friday about the American Rescue Plan.
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KSAT.com will provide a livestream of the event scheduled for 1:30 p.m. CT, although delays are possible. You can view the livestream in the video player above.
On Wednesday, Congress approved the president’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” which is aimed at easing the economic impact of the virus on tens of millions of people. Some cash distributions could begin arriving in the bank accounts of Americans this weekend.
“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Biden said as he signed the bill in the Oval Office.
Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions providing up to $1,400 in direct payments and extending $300 weekly emergency unemployment benefits into early September. Also included are expanded tax credits over the next year for children, child care and family leave — some of them credits that Democrats have signaled they’d like to make permanent — plus spending for renters, food programs and people’s utility bills.
Biden on Thursday night pledged in his first prime-time address to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May 1 and raised the possibility of beginning to “mark our independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July. He offered Americans fresh hope and appealed anew for their help.
Speaking in the White House East Room, Biden honored the “collective suffering” of Americans over the past year in his 24-minute address and then offered them a vision for a return to a modicum of normalcy this summer.
“We are bound together by the loss and the pain of the days that have gone by,” he said. “We are also bound together by the hope and the possibilities in the days in front of us.”
He predicted Americans could safely gather at least in small groups for July Fourth to “make this Independence Day truly special.”
But he also cautioned that this was a “goal” and attaining it depends on people’s cooperation in following public health guidelines and rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated as soon as eligible. Only that, he said, can bring about an end to a pandemic that has killed more than 530,000 Americans and disrupted the lives of countless more.
“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said of the sacrifices of the yearlong-and-counting pandemic.