One day after President Biden gave a televised address promising that his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would help lift up an economy stunned by the coronavirus pandemic, he entered the Rose Garden to a standing ovation from an audience of Democrats.
“It changes the paradigm,” Mr. Biden said about the legislation as he listed its various benefits for low- and middle-class workers. “For the first time in a long time, this bill puts working people in this nation first.”
Since the plan was passed with no Republican support, the signing celebration was billed as a “bicameral” but not “bipartisan” event, as Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, described it to reporters on Thursday.
Ignoring the political division in Washington and the Republicans who had denigrated the relief plan as wasteful and too progressive, a group of Democratic leaders who couldn’t point to unity across the aisle instead tried to direct the public’s attention to comity within their own party.
“Our unity, on behalf of all of the American people, is what made this such a triumph,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said before Mr. Biden spoke.
“We Democrats made promises,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said. “We said if we gained the Senate, kept the House and elected the president, we would finally get things done and get us out of this Covid crisis. And we are on the road to success.”
But Mr. Biden acknowledged the thin margins that exist for Democratic leadership. He congratulated Mr. Schumer on guiding the “controversial” piece of legislation through an evenly divided Senate, and also House leaders for doing the same with a slim majority.
The event amounted to a victory lap for a White House that has rolled out a media blitz to hail the largest federal infusion of aid to the poor in generations. And it will be part of a campaign by Democrats to sell the landmark legislation to people who are politically opposed to it. Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Jill Biden, the first lady, are among the figures who will soon travel around the country to promote the particulars of the plan.
The legislation substantially expands the child tax credit and increases subsidies for health insurance. Restaurants will get financial help, and state governments will get an infusion of aid. Among its many other provisions, the plan provides some $130 billion to assist in reopening schools.
“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Mr. Biden said to reporters who had gathered in the Oval Office on Thursday, “and giving people in this nation, working people, the middle-class folks, people who built the country, a fighting chance.”
Mr. Biden has also encouraged Americans to receive vaccines and practice social distancing. On Thursday evening, he said that he would use his executive authority to require states to make all adults eligible for the vaccine by May 1, with a broad goal that Americans could gather together to celebrate the Fourth of July.
