WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in the United States on Wednesday approved President Joe Biden"s landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. The bill has been sent to the White House for Biden to ratify after the House of Representatives gave its backing with 220 votes in favor and 211 against. "A vaccinated American is the only way to beat the pandemic, get the economy back on track, and for us to get back our lives and our loved ones. That"s why the American Rescue Plan was so critical," the US president said following the passage of the bill. Biden thanked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers for passing the bill. "This bill represents a historic, historic victory for the American people. I look forward to signing it later this week," Biden said. "Everything in the American Rescue Plan addresses a real need — including investments to fund our entire vaccination effort. More vaccines, more vaccinators and more vaccination sites." The bill is the US" sixth relief package since the beginning of the pandemic. It will provide checks of up to $1,400 this year to most adults and extend $300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September. It also allocated hundreds of billions for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, schools, state and local governments, and ailing industries from airlines to concert halls. There are expanded tax credits over the next year for children, child care, and family leave — some of the credits that Democrats have signaled they’d like to make permanent — plus spending for renters, feeding programs and people’s utility bills. There’s aid for farmers of color, pension systems and student borrowers, and subsidies for consumers buying health insurance and states expanding Medicaid coverage for lower earners. Democrats overwhelmingly approved the deal with just one of them voting against but Republicans massively rejected it, denouncing it as "a pay-off for progressives". Democrats are "using COVID as an excuse to ram through their far-left agenda," the House of Representatives official Twitter account stated. — Agencies