“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday the $1.9 trillion economic relief legislation headed for President Joe Biden’s desk will be a ‘turning point’ that transforms U.S. politics by restoring the country’s faith in government. In an interview as the House voted on final passage, the New York Democrat said the bill was ‘certainly way up there’ among his proudest achievements, after he held all 50 senators in his ideologically diverse caucus to pass it. ‘It does so much good for so many people. And one of our missions is to show people that government can actually make their lives better. That’s very, very important because if they are not able to see that, they turned to demagogues, they turned to autocrats, they turned to bigotry – Donald Trump,’ he said. ‘This legislation has some things that are immediately going to show people that government made a difference – by having a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.'”

“Schumer said the Democrats – who rejected a Republican push to shrink the bill and passed it on a party-line basis – had learned their lesson after failing to deliver adequate relief in the 2009 financial crisis. He said it returns the party to the economic-populist roots it had under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. ‘The Republicans are making a huge mistake by opposing this,’ he said. Schumer’s remarks indicate that Democrats are eager to capitalize on the popularity of the legislation and use it to rally voters to their side to protect their slim majorities in Congress. The unanimous GOP opposition sharpens the political contrast between the two parties, as the bill includes provisions such as $1,400 stimulus payments and $300-a-week jobless benefits. The response from voters will test the new Democratic approach to going big against the Republican vision, honed in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, that government is typically a source of the country’s problems and not a solution to them” – NBC News.