Updated at 9:30 p.m. ET
President Trump on Sunday night signed a massive coronavirus relief and spending package, relenting on a measure he had called a "disgrace" days earlier.
The legislation, which combines $900 billion in COVID-19 aid with government funding through September 2021, was passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress on Dec. 21 — only to see Trump blindside legislators the next day and blast the bill.
In a statement Sunday night, Trump said lawmakers will pursue some of his sought-after changes.
His signature avoids a partial government shutdown, as spending was set to run out Tuesday, and it puts an end to days of uncertainty over when millions of Americans will receive the desperately needed economic relief provided by the bill.
Among its many provisions, the package includes direct payments to qualifying Americans, worth up to $600 per adult and child; a boost in weekly unemployment benefits; and funds for small-business aid and vaccine distribution.
But his delay in signing the package has cost millions of Americans a week of unemployment benefits, as two pandemic-related programs expired Saturday.
In a statement Sunday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., alluded to those expired benefits.
"The signing of the bipartisan, bicameral coronavirus relief legislation is welcome news for the fourteen million Americans who just lost the lifeline of unemployment benefits on Christmas Weekend, and for the millions more struggling to stay afloat during this historic pandemic and economic crisis," she said.
In a statement of his own, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., applauded Trump for signing the package, without mentioning any of Trump's demands.
"The compromise bill is not perfect, but it will do an enormous amount of good for struggling Kentuckians and Americans across the country who need help now," McConnell said.
How we got here
The path to the president signing the first major piece of pandemic relief legislation since the $2 trillion CARES Act in March was a long and circuitous one.
After months of bitter negotiations between Republicans and Democrats, Congress passed the combined coronavirus aid and spending bill last Monday.
But on Tuesday, Trump blasted the legislation, calling it a "disgrace."
He criticized Congress for not providing more in direct payments for Americans, suggesting the number should increase to up to $2,000 per qualifying individual and $4,000 for couples.
That's despite the fact that it was members of Trump's own party who had rejected proposals for higher payments during negotiations. Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan effort to include $1,200 direct payments in the relief deal.
Trump also complained that too much money was being allocated to foreign aid and domestic projects not related to the coronavirus pandemic. The reality is that congressional leaders passed the relief bill in combination with a broader spending bill that funds the government. The president has signed bills including money for these programs in the past couple of years.
On Christmas Eve, House Democrats sought to follow Trump's lead and pursue larger direct payments by unanimous consent, while House Republicans attempted to revisit the foreign aid section of the omnibus bill. Both changes were blocked by the other party.
In his statement Sunday night, Trump said the House will vote Monday on a previously planned bill to increase payments to individuals from $600 to $2,000. Trump added: "The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000."
The president also said that he "will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed."
The Democratic-led House is highly unlikely to take up those spending items.
Trump's statement also includes items that are not part of the relief and spending measure.
"Congress has promised that Section 230, which so unfairly benefits Big Tech at the expense of the American people, will be reviewed and either be terminated or substantially reformed," he wrote. "Likewise, the House and Senate have agreed to focus strongly on the very substantial voter fraud which took place in the November 3 Presidential election."
There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, which Trump falsely claims he won. President-elect Joe Biden is set to be sworn in in weeks.
A lack of a repeal of Section 230, which provides some legal protections for technology companies, was one of the reasons Trump said he vetoed the annual defense authorization bill. Both congressional chambers are planning to return to Washington, D.C., in the coming days to attempt to override that veto.
Trump tried to suggest he was saving the nation from the crisis he, himself, has caused, but it is likely that he finally signed the bill because his stubbornness was not playing well across an increasingly desperate nation, especially as he is golfing at Mar-a-Lago and Vice President Mike Pence is skiing in Vail, Colorado. Americans were generally angry over his inaction on a bill that would provide relief for those suffering from the economic crisis, funding for the distribution of vaccines, and funding for the government. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed out today, “If his goal was really to get a better deal on the budget, he would have vetoed it immediately and begun negotiating. But his goal is actually national arson—chaos for the fun of it. So he sits on the budget—does nothing—in order to guarantee a government shutdown.”
He was also under pressure from Republican Senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who likely told him his stubbornness was undermining the Republican Senate candidates in Georgia before the January 5 runoff. While Trump is furious with McConnell and the other Senate Republicans who have acknowledged Biden’s win, he is apparently not furious enough that he wants to see McConnell replaced by a Democrat, as would happen if the Senate is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
So the CAA will become law, and the drama of lawmaking for this congressional session should be over. But it is not quite over yet. Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, which specifies how the defense budget will be spent, on Wednesday, December 23. The NDAA has passed with bipartisan majorities since the 1960s when it first began, and presidents have always signed it. But Trump has chosen to veto it, on the grounds that it calls for the renaming of U.S. military bases named for Confederate generals and that it does not strip social media companies of protection from liability when third parties post offensive material on them.
The National Defense Authorization Act this year does something else, though, that seems to me of far more importance to the president than the naming of military bases.
It includes a measure known as the Corporate Transparency Act, which undercuts shell companies and money laundering in America. The act requires the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The measure also increases penalties for money laundering and streamlines cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.
America is currently the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company which enables them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes. The measure will pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. When journalists from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and BuzzFeed, as well as a number of other organizations, dug into documents from FinCEN that had been leaked to BuzzFeed this fall, they discovered shell companies moving money for criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria.
Shell companies also mean that our political system is awash in secrecy. Social media giants like Facebook cannot determine who is buying political advertising. And, as Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) noted, shell companies allow “foreign bad actors” to corrupt our system even more directly. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” he reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.”
We know the Trump family uses shell companies: Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off Stormy Daniels, and just this month we learned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner approved a shell company that spent more than $600 million in campaign funds.
The new requirements in the NDAA apply not just to future entities, but also to existing ones.
Congress needs to repass the NDAA over Trump’s veto—indeed it is likely that the CTA was included in this measure precisely because the NDAA is must-pass legislation—and both the CTA and the NDAA bill into which is it tucked have bipartisan support. Trump has objected to a number of things in the original bill but has not publicly complained about the CTA in it. It will be interesting to see if Congress repasses this bill in its original form and, if not, what changes it makes.