AOC and Chuck Schumer Join Forces to Push Taxpayer-Funded COVID Funerals
$2 billion will go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency
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Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teamed up to push a federal program that will pay families of COVID-19 victims up to $7,000 for funeral costs.
The taxpayer-funded payments will be reimbursed to COVID victim's families, even if they are illegal aliens.
Schumer said the lawmakers wish for the program to last as the pandemic does, CNN reported.
The program Schumer and Ocasio-Cortez introduced during a news conference in New York is part of a coronavirus relief measure signed into law in December by then-President Donald Trump, The New York Post reports.
Under the bill, $2 billion will go to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for COVID-19 funeral expenses, The Post adds.
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$200,000 million going to New York, the hardest-hit area of the country.
WATCH:
"Families also are having to deal with having to pay for the storage of the bodies of their own loved ones. This is wrong."
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) February 8, 2021
AOC and Chuck Schumer announced FEMA has allocated $2 billion to reimburse low-income families in New York up to $7,000 for Covid funeral and burial costs pic.twitter.com/x3aaw6u63R
But details of the plan still aren't clear, CNET reported.
How recipients will be determined and if income limits will be addressed has yet to be revealed.
“FEMA is working quickly to finalize an implementation plan and interim policy to support the delivery of funeral assistance to eligible citizens,” a FEMA representative wrote in an email, CNET reported.
“To help administer the program, FEMA is hiring contract support through the federal acquisitions process to help administer the program."
"The contract is open for proposals until Feb. 8. After a contract is awarded, FEMA will make an announcement later this year when applications are being accepted.”
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Ocasio-Cortez was clear illegal aliens should have no worries about getting the money.
AOC was asked whether “undocumented” are eligible:
“I think it’s completely understandable why there’s that fear there, especially over the last four years of targeting of our immigrant families,” she said.
“But I think right now our families, especially under a Biden administration, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, that is prioritizing immigrant rights, including those who are undocumented, to not have fear, and to not allow that fear to further marginalize our community.”
Only earlier this month, Joe Biden was looking into "narrowing" which Americans will qualify for the next round of stimulus checks.
Americans holding out for relief money as a lifeline would face another blow after critics from Biden’s own party have suggested that he has already broken his promise of $2,000 stimulus checks.
"Biden has publicly expressed willingness to negotiate the stimulus payments, which under Democrats’ current plans would begin to diminish at $75,000 for individuals and couples making $150,000 a year," The Washington Post reported.
"Biden is also aiming to provide $1,400 per every adult and child under that threshold, on top of the $600 per adult and child approved by Congress in December."
