In response to 861,000 Americans filing new unemployment claims last week, Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room Director Zac Petkanas released the following statement:
“As yet another week goes by with catastrophic levels of new unemployment claims that outpace the worst weeks of the Great Recession, the need to immediately pass President Biden’s American Rescue Plan could not be clearer.
“The provisions contained within the legislation are critical: expanded unemployment insurance, direct stimulus checks, state and local aid to keep first responders on the job, assistance for families struggling to make rent and mortgage payments, and the funding for a national testing and vaccine distribution effort that will finally get this pandemic under control.
“American families need the American Rescue Plan now, and every moment of delay drives us further into economic crisis. Any Congressional Republicans who continue to delay or attempt to chop up the deal are making a deliberate choice to unnecessarily extend this economic crisis with their continued partisan obstruction.”