Photo Courtesy of Scott Heins/Gov. Cuomo’s Office
Part of the aid earmarked for NY in the new COVID relief bill will go toward vaccine distribution.
By Forum Staff
With a bipartisan spending and COVID relief deal just reached, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday detailed its pending impact on New York as more than $50 billion dollars.
The deal includes direct relief checks, extending enhanced unemployment insurance, and secures another round of forgivable Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, restaurants and nonprofits across the state. As part of the deal, more than $13 billion flows directly to New York State governments via education funding, transit funding and highways, vaccine distribution, COVID health funding, emergency assistance for renters and more.
Schumer emphasized that the following figures are tentative:
Over $6.5 Billion for NY in Enhanced Unemployment Compensation – The bill provides billions in additional federal relief for struggling New Yorkers by extending the historic unemployment insurance reforms established in the CARES Act through March 14, 2021. Importantly, it reinstates the critical lifeline of the enhanced unemployment assistance, providing an additional $300 per week on top of all state and federal unemployment benefits. The bill also:
Extends the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which provides unemployment benefits to the self-employed, freelancers, gig workers, part-time workers and other New Yorkers in non-traditional employment, and increases the number of weeks of PUA benefits an individual can claim from 39 to 50.
Provides 24 additional weeks of federally-funded unemployment insurance benefits to New Yorkers who have exhausted their regular state benefits.
Continues the full federal financing of state Shared Work programs, allowing thousands of New York employers to keep their valued employees on payroll during this downturn.
Delivers a federally-funded $100 per week additional “mixed-earner” benefit to New Yorkers who have a combination of traditional (W-2) and independent employment (1099) income (1099) and are disqualified from receiving PUA because they are still eligible for regular state benefits.
$9 Billion for New Yorkers – Direct cash payments to New Yorkers, including $600 for individuals making up to $75,000, $1,200 for couples making less than $150,000, and an additional $600 per child. This amounts to $2,400 for a family of (4).
$260 Million – FEMA’s funeral assistance – financial aid to those who have lost a loved one among the over 35,000 deaths in New York caused by COVID – which comes at no cost to the State.
“New York State governments will directly receive over $13 billion dollars in a variety of ways from mass transit aid, to education aid, to money for vaccinations and testing. In addition to direct relief checks, extending enhanced unemployment insurance, this deal provides another round of PPP and grants for small businesses across the state, including set-asides for minority-owned and other underserved businesses and new larger forgivable loans for restaurants as part of a funding bridge to the Biden administration where we will to fight secure additional relief,” said Schumer. “In addition, the center of New York’s cultural life—independent music and live event venues, Broadway, independent movie theaters, museums and other cultural institutions—will receive dedicated aid to stay alive here in New York. Direct aid in the form of education funding, transit funding and highways, vaccine distribution and COVID health funding, along with emergency assistance for renters are just some of the immediate ways this legislation will help the state and city’s budgets amid the crisis.”
