ALBANY COUNTY — The congressman representing the Capital Region, the governor, and the Albany County executive all said on Monday that the $900 billion relief package finally hammered out by Congress fell short in not providing needed funds for state and local governments.

In a surprise on Tuesday, President Donald Trump tweeted a video, saying he wouldn’t sign the bill. He called it “a disgrace” and said, “It has almost nothing to do with COVID.”

He said he was asking Congress to  increase “the ridiculously low $600” in relief to be sent to each American to $2,000. And to “get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items.”

Otherwise, a stimulus package will be left up to the next administration, said Trump, a Republican who lost November’s election by over 7 million votes to Democrat Joe Biden.

“Maybe that administration will be me and we will get it done,” concluded Trump, who has been unsuccessful in his suits to try to show election fraud.

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, responded with a tweet, saying, “Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!”

The Democrat-dominated House of Representatives in May had proposed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package, which included funds for state and local governments, that the Republican Senate would not back.

“Sadly, it falls woefully short of what the American people need to weather the next six months of this pandemic, and it fails entirely to deliver on the urgent needs of our communities that need critical state and local funding to protect jobs and essential services that have kept us safe and kept us going during this difficult period,” said Paul Tonko, a Democratic congressman from Amsterdam, in a statement on Monday night. “This legislation is much too little, and after seven months of obstruction by the Republican Senate, it is certainly much too late.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo in a video press conference on Monday morning said that Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who is the Senate's majority leader, “still takes the position that we should bankrupt the states and wouldn’t do state and local assistance.”

“This is not partisan,” Cuomo, a Democrat, insisted. “Senator McConnell happens to be Republican. I’m chairman of the National Governors Association,” said Cuomo, noting there are more Republican than Democratic governors.

“The National Governors Association sent a letter to Congress asking for $500 billion in state and local assistance,” Cuomo said. “Do you know what we got in this bill? Zero. Nada. Niente. Zero.”

Cuomo went on, about New York State, “We have a $15 billion deficit caused by COVID, caused by the federal government, caused by their incompetence, caused by their negligence, caused by the COVID spring ambush. I can’t make up a $15 billion deficit.”

Cuomo said the lack of federal funds would mean the state would have to lay off the people who would be needed to administer COVID-19 vaccines.

He said it made no sense to have dramatic tax increases when the economy is faltering.

“When you don’t fund states and cities, that means cities lay off police officers and they lay off firemen, firefighters, and they lay off teachers,” he said. “That’s what happens: You hurt people. When you don’t fund the state, it means I can’t help people with rent relief and mortgage relief. I can’t fund schools. You hurt people.”

When state funds are lacking, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy, also a Democrat, said at his Monday morning press briefing, “They have a habit of pushing that down to us on the county level. We have to be wary of that. It’s going to affect our programs.”

He also said, “You can’t tax your way out of this.”

He noted the state’s 2-percent levy limit and said, if the county were to go over that cap, it would lose funding for programs like Raise the Age and would also lose the $28 million cap on Medicaid.

McCoy highlighted some of the main points of the $900 billion package, including a weekly increase of $300 for unemployment benefits; a relief check of $600 for lower-income Americans; nearly $300 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program so businesses can keep paying their workers; funding for additional COVID-19 testing and vaccine delivery; a second bailout for airports on top of the original $15 billion; and funding for performance centers like the county’s Times Union Center, the Palace Theatre, and The Egg.

Some of the other allocations include: $25 billion in rental assistance for families struggling to stay in their homes and an extension of the eviction moratorium; $13 billion in increased food stamp and child-nutrition benefits to help relieve the hunger crisis that has left up to 17 million children food insecure; and funding for colleges and schools, with $82 billion allotted to help lessen virus transmission and reopen classrooms and $10 billion for child-care assistance to help get parents back to work and keep child care providers open.

“We need more,” said McCoy.

He said he hadn’t counted on states, counties, cities, or villages getting anything “until we get a new president.”

Along similar lines, Cuomo said at his press conference, “I just hope Joe Biden gets in quickly and sanity restores to the nation.”

Tonko said, “We must be ready to move forward with a real emergency response the day the new Congress convenes on January 3rd, and I will not rest until we have delivered the lifeline our communities, frontline workers, first responders and struggling families need to get through this.”