• • CCUSA Presents the Washington Weekly

An additional COVID aid package took a major step forward this week. Meanwhile, COVID cases and unemployment continue to hamper everyday life.

President Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion aid package took a step forward this week as Senate Democrats began the process of budget reconciliation by passing a budget resolution through the Senate. Senate Democratic leadership's decision to use the budget reconciliation process allows them to pass the bill with a simple majority, rather than through normal order which requires a 60-vote filibuster threshold. One caveat that comes with utilizing budget reconciliation is that every amendment must be voted on before the resolution may proceed. This led to an all-night voting session yesterday, sometimes referred to as vote-a-rama, that lasted into early this morning. The process took 15 hours and hundreds of amendments were voted on, but the resolution eventually passed through the Senate chamber and is now off to the House side where they will need to approve the Senate changes. As the House works through budget resolution amendments, the actual bill is being written by various congressional committees in both chambers.

The U.S. added 49,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate fell to 6.3% from 6.7%. The slight improvement comes on the heels of the economy shedding jobs in December for the first time since April.  The economy remains with nine million fewer jobs than before the start of the pandemic. Unemployment claims remain at a staggeringly high level with another 779,000 Americans filing new claims last week. For a third straight week, continuing jobless benefit claims fell, with 17.8 million Americans filing new claims. Although continuing claims have lately been on a downward trajectory they remain well above the 2019 average of 1.7 million. 

On February 4, the U.S. had at least 126,842 new Coronavirus cases and 5,116 new coronavirus deaths. The number of cases is down 30% from the average two weeks prior and deaths are down 5% from two weeks ago. Nearly 1.3 million people are receiving the coronavirus vaccine each day, and the CDC said that 27.9 million people have gotten at least one dose, including 6.9 million people who have been fully vaccinated. Please contact your state health department for more information on its plan for COVID-19 vaccination.

On January 29, the trivia question was, "Araminta Ross is the birth name of which American hero?"

Andrea Guzman from an Affiliate of Catholic Charities Brooklyn & Queens was the first to correctly identify Harriet Tubman as the correct answer. Around 1844 she married a free black named John Tubman and took his last name. She later changed her first name to Harriet, after her mother.

An American abolitionist, was considered the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's "conductors." Tubman had made the perilous trip to slave country 19 times by 1860, including one especially challenging journey in which she rescued her 70-year-old parents. Of the famed heroine, who became known as "Moses," Frederick Douglass said, "Excepting John Brown -- of sacred memory -- I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman]." And John Brown, who conferred with "General Tubman" about his plans to raid Harpers Ferry, once said that she was "one of the bravest persons on this continent."

A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles. After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished people and the elderly.  After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she would spend the rest of her long life. She died in 1913.

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