(CNN)President Joe Biden signed two more executive orders on Friday -- one focused on expanding food assistance and delivering stimulus checks to very low-income Americans, and the other on raising the minimum wage to $15 for the federal workforce -- as he continues his swift efforts to
overturn his predecessor's policies.
The measures build on the President's drive to aid struggling families with a
$1.9 trillion relief plan that he outlined last week. The plan would send another $1,400 in additional stimulus checks, extend unemployment benefits and nutrition assistance and provide more help to renters and homeowners in need.
That more ambitious proposal would have to go through Congress, while the steps outlined in Friday's orders don't require legislation and can be put in place faster.
In remarks before he signed, the President listed many of the financial troubles facing Americans, including that 1 in 7 households -- more than 1 in 5 Black and Latino families -- say they don't have enough food to eat, 14 million Americans have fallen behind on their rent and 900,000 people filed for unemployment for the first time last week.
"This cannot be who we are as a country," he said. "These are not the values of our nation. We cannot, will not let people go hungry. We cannot let people get evicted because of nothing they did themselves. We cannot watch people lose their jobs. We have to act."
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