The Senate on Saturday passed its version of the COVID rescue package, with the aim of sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk by March 14 when some of the existing aid lapses. 

The bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, will head back to the House next. It would be the sixth financial rescue package that Congress has passed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The bill would give thousands of dollars a year in child tax credits to parents, distribute money to help people pay for health insurance, and send out direct checks for many families. 

However, Biden’s plan to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour didn’t make the cut, after inadequate support in the Senate and a decision by the Senate parliamentarian that such a provision didn’t belong in the package.

“I want the American people to know that we’re going to get through this and some day soon our businesses will reopen, our economy will reopen, and life will reopen,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Saturday ahead of the bill’s passage. 

Here are the biggest provisions in the package that would affect businesses, schools, and personal-finance decisions.

You can jump to a section through the table of contents below, or you can scroll through.

Biden had promised $2,000 checks in the days leading up to the Georgia Senate runoffs, but the plan he unveiled after his inauguration called for $1,400 checks.

He said the total would add up to $2,000 a person after people got $600 checks as part of the $900 billion stimulus President Donald Trump signed into law in December. 

Under the Senate bill, people making more than $80,000 a year for an individual or $160,000 a year for a couple wouldn’t get checks. People’s income would be measured according to their most recent tax filing.

The Senate’s plan means 16 million fewer people would get checks than under the House plan, according to a preliminary analysis from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

It’s a change from the House version that had stipulated that anyone making $75,000 a year or less would qualify, and people with higher incomes would get smaller checks. Individuals wouldn’t get checks if they made $100,000 or more and couples would be cut off if they made $200,000 or more

The checks are popular with the public and were started as part of the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Trump signed into law in March. In that package, most people received $1,200 direct payments.

Democrats want to pass the latest rescue package by March 14 because that’s when enhanced unemployment benefits are set to run out in many states. Right now people are getting $300 a week on top of their unemployment payments, and the latest stimulus will extend the program until September 6.  It would also waive tax payments for the first $10,200 in jobless aid for people making up to $150,000.

The $300 is a decrease from the House version of the bill, which stipulated that people should get $400 a week on top of their unemployment payments. 

Both would be lower than the $600 a week from the CARES Act. That provision expired in July, and the $900 billion stimulus package from December reauthorized the program at $300 a week.

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A new child-tax-credit program would provide families with $3,600 per child under age 6 and $3,000 for children between the ages of 6 and 18. The payments would go out over the course of a year starting July 1.

Democrats wanted the money to go out to families monthly — in $250 or $300 installments — but instead, the bill gives the Treasury secretary the authority to send the money out “periodically.” This means the determination will be left up to the Biden administration. 

The child tax credits would start to phase out for people earning more than $75,000 a year, couples earning $150,000 a year, or a head of household earning more than $112,500 a year. 

The program is intended to help with the cost of childcare and aid people who lost income as a result of the pandemic. But Democrats also say it’s part of an effort to reduce the number of children living in poverty, and they want to extend the program after this year.

Under current law, families can claim a $2,000 tax credit for children 17 and under. The previous amount was doubled under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

Families get the money as a lump sum after they file their taxes, but if their tax bill is lower than $2,000 — which is the case for many low-income people — they get only $1,400. The stimulus package would change that, allowing low-income people to receive a full child tax credit. 

The bill would provide $3 billion to extend a 15% increase in the food-assistance program called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program through September. Those SNAP benefit increases are set to lapse at the end of June. The plan would also provide $880 million for the Women, Infants, and Children program, which provides food aid to low-income pregnant women and mothers and children up to age 5.

Housing and rental aid

The bill would provide $21.5 billion to help people struggling to pay their rent, a $1 billion increase from the House version of the bill. States would receive about $10 billion over four years to help people struggling to pay their mortgages or for other housing costs such as utilities or homeowners insurance.

The bill would also set aside $5 billion in aid to states to assist people experiencing homelessness.

The stimulus would add $7.25 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, a fund created under the CARES Act that lets small businesses borrow forgivable loans as long as they continue to pay their workers. Certain nonprofits and live venues would newly qualify for the program, as would digital-only media companies. 

The addition would increase the PPP to $813.7 billion including the spending under previous stimulus measures. 

The latest package also would set aside a $25 billion fund specifically for restaurants, which have been particularly hard hit after state shutdown orders, clearing and capacity restrictions, and customers’ avoiding dining out. 

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The package would provide funding to help schools reopen safely or operate virtually, in addition to the $82 billion included in the December stimulus.

The money could be used to pay for protective equipment, plastic barriers, ventilation, additional construction, and internet access, though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office laid out that much of the money wouldn’t be spent until after this year.

The schools would be required to put 20% of the funding toward making up any lost learning for students who missed school. Under the Senate version of the bill $3 billion of the total must go to private schools that serve students from low-income families. 

Another $39.6 billion would go toward colleges.

The latest relief package would make some of the most consequential changes to the Affordable Care Act in a decade. It would inject billions of dollars into the health-insurance marketplaces so that customers would pay less in premiums when they sign up for health plans.

People who are on unemployment insurance would benefit significantly because the government would pay the full cost of their health-insurance premiums. 

The changes would apply to people who buy insurance on their own and not the majority of people, who get health insurance through a government program like Medicare or their jobs.

The bill includes numerous other provisions for medical coverage. For instance, the government would pay the full cost of premiums for COBRA, a program that lets laid-off workers stay on the health insurance they got through their jobs. The program will last until September 30. 

The COBRA provision is more generous than the House version of the American Rescue Plan Act, which would have provided subsidies for 85% of people’s premiums. Typically, people have to pay the full cost of their premiums under COBRA, which average $7,500 for an individual. 

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Funding for rural hospitals and COVID-19 vaccines

The Senate added a provision for rural hospitals, clinics, and doctors to get $8.5 billion that they can use to recoup income lost during the pandemic and to help them pay for caring for COVID-19 patients. 

The Senate also put off for a year a House provision that would have helped states demand discounts for certain prescription drugs for low-income patients, including insulin. The delay creates an opening for the pharmaceutical industry to lobby against the provision.

Other health-related provisions in the bill would allocate $14 billion to coronavirus-vaccine distribution and another $46 billion for testing and contact tracing. The government would also pay $7.6 billion to hire another 100,000 public-health workers to help end the pandemic.

The COVID-19 stimulus package passed in December provided $22 billion to help states test and track people with the coronavirus and $9 billion to help them distribute the vaccine to their residents.

$350 billion for states and local governments

States and cities would get $350 billion under the stimulus package the House passed. $130 billion of that would go to local governments. The Senate tweaked the bill to direct $10 billion of that money help pay for “critical capital projects.” 

The Senate version of the bill also narrows how the money can be used. It says that the money would have to go toward responding to the pandemic or toward recouping losses that happened during the pandemic. The money could be used toward other projects as well, including broadband. 

The coronavirus rescue bill would direct roughly $86 billion into multiemployer pension plans that are bordering on insolvency. The money would go out from 2022 to 2024 to 185 pensions jointly run by labor unions and employers, allowing the plans to pay full benefits through 2051, according to CBO.  

The provision is key for unions, which heavily support Democrats, but it wasn’t something Biden asked for when he outlined a plan for COVID-19 relief.