President Biden’s economic recovery plan from the pandemic expands on a bipartisan aid package that Congress approved in December. His stated goal is to speed an economic recovery by reducing illnesses and fatalities caused by the virus.

Highlights of the plan include:

• Giving working families a $1,400 per-person check, bringing their total relief payment from this and the December down payment to the $2,000 it could have been last year.
• Providing grants to more than 1 million of the hardest hit small businesses and leveraging $175 billion in additional small business lending and investment.
• Extending current unemployment insurance benefits and eligibility and providing a $400 supplement until the end of September.
• Providing up to 106 million more Americans with 14 weeks of emergency paid family and medical leave.
• Investing $160 billion to provide the supplies, emergency response, testing, and public health workforce that the country needs to stop the spread of COVID-19 while distributing vaccines as quickly as possible.

The National Retail Federation reacted by supporting the proposal.

“We support providing critical government assistance in the form of direct payments to families and individuals whose lives have been disrupted, further aid for small businesses across the country, and tools to keep businesses open and the economy growing,” NRF said in a statement. It added that retailers are ready to play a role in helping to vaccinate citizens as soon as possible.

Click here to review a full summary of the proposal.