House Democrats are pushing for an even larger coronavirus relief bill than the initial CARES Act, totaling roughly $3 trillion. This would include additional stimulus checks ($1,200 again, like last time,) extend the unemployment+$600/week through January 2021 (it is slated to end in July as of now,) and also sends a lot more money to the states.
As of now, however, it is not likely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate, however, even though President Trump has indicated his support for additional stimulus checks.
A big issue seems to be support for the states, which have gone from surpluses to deficits because of the virus - both the additional spending and reduced revenue in sales taxes. It seems Republicans think only blue states have problems, but I have a hard time believing red states are in that much better shape, let alone purple states.
In 2009 states had to cut their budgets and lay off a lot of people, and that hurt the recovery. We might be making the same mistake again.
Here in Ohio, we’re definitely having state budget issues. Governor DeWine announced in one of the daily press conferences that he intended to cut budgets to deal with the shortfalls. This is so that he can hold the rainy day fund in reserve to deal with any emergency issues that may arise in future months.
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about stimulus checks issued directly to citizens. Other forms of assistance like housing, medical and nutrition aid, support for small businesses, extensions on unemployment payment all make fine sense to me. Just giving every Jane and John Q Citizen, including the gainfully employed, a lump sum payment and saying “Spend wisely.” just seems wrong. I’m not sure how or even if any kind of means testing should be applied to this stimulus money and I’m not trying to defend a position here. I’m just wondering if this is our best move.
If all else fails, if they give me another check, I can always donate it to the local food bank.
I know we’re supposed to make this forum politics free, but I think this is political posturing by the democrats.
They know the bill won’t pass and will be blocked by republicans, so they can go out campaigning and say ‘The GOP has money for wars and tax cuts for the rich, but not money to help you or your local government weather a viral pandemic’.
Its no different than in 2006 when the democrats in the California state house and state senate passed ‘single payer healthcare’ just to have it vetoed by Gov Schwarzenegger. They knew it would never pass, they just wanted to run on it as a political attack ad (FWIW, once the democrats in the CA legislature had a democratic governor in California, they stopped passing single payer bills).
Having said that, I’m not sure what investments have the best bang for their buck. Seems like restructuring mortgages to provide delays on payments, but adding a year on the end of mortgages would be a good idea.
Another round of $1200 checks, I mean would that help or will people more save that money rather than spend it? Seems like investing in infrastructure, food stamps, etc would create more jobs than a $1200 stimulus.
Also when will we be paying all this money back? It took 50 years to pay back the money we borrowed for WW2.
Especially now that things are starting to open back up, I think we need to take a wait and see approach. Will the virus come back with a vengeance? Will the economy start to come back? How quickly?
A big problem is that we have that $600 per week unemployment until July 31 which will make people who have been laid off not want to come back to work. Not that I blame them. I would certainly rather make more for staying home than take a pay cut by going back to work; this seems like something that was very shortsighted by our lawmakers in their haste to pass the first stimulus. This proposal adds to the problem.
I believe it was even more lavish than that - it’s normal (pre-pandemic) unemployment ***plus ***an additional $600 per week. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
That’s correct, CARES is $600 on top of your normal unemployment benefits from your state.
Something that needs to be kept in mind here; the relief needs to be implemented quickly. “Just give everyone a check” is simple. Implementing more complex supports cost time, which is not necessarily a luxury available. People need to buy food and pay their now-overdue rents today, not in a month. A consequence of speed and crude plans is that dollars wind up going to folks who probably shouldn’t get dollars.
I’m personally fine with it, although it probably won’t pass. I’m not comfortable with the level of testing currently. So if this can buy four more weeks of restrictions for the powers-that-be to get testing to the 3-4 million tests/week that Fauci claims is achievable, then good enough. Three million tests/week seems achievable in the next few weeks if the improvements in trend continue. Admittedly a big ‘if’; my confidence in the current administration is not particularly high.
But sure, sign me up for increased taxes for the next decade.
Right, and that will kill any recovery. When the restaurants, the bars, the mom and pops, and the gyms finally open back up, who will work for them? This plan is insanity in that it pays people $50k-$60k/yr to do nothing. No place will be able to hire anyone for less than that.
Are terminated from your job through no fault of your own
Make yourself available to work
Actually attempt to look for work, but fail to secure work
#2 and #3, you can B.S. your way through to varying degrees. #1, you cannot easily fake; if you are furloughed and your employer opens back up, then if you choose not to return you haven’t been laid off; you have quit. Now, if you’ve actually been laid off and you genuinely have no expectation that your previous employer will start asking you to come into work and paying you again, then that’s a different situation. Still, before choosing to ride out the enhanced UI benefits for as long as they last, you have to consider that when things open up, lots of people will be scrambling for a job again. If you pass up the opportunity to secure work while you have the safety net in place, you run the risk that when the enhanced UI runs out, you may be totally screwed.
I have to disagree with this as being political and solely done because they know the GOP will not vote for it, and thus it will get dropped. I think that what a lot of people are missing is the very real chance we are teetering on a vicious cycle of deflation. People haven’t been spending money during this crisis in the same ways they were before. The reality is, they can’t. Even after things start opening back up (assuming we don’t get a bounce back as is happening in other countries), people aren’t going to start spending the same way at the same rates they were. And that’s going to create a vicious cycle, where demand for many things is too low to support the ability of many businesses to continue to produce the goods or services in question.
A direct stimulus actually makes a lot of sense at this point, as did the previous stimulus aimed mainly at US businesses. This is when we probably need to do massive stimulus packages (while, in the good times is when we need to increase taxes, increase interest rates and prepare for stuff like what’s happening now). I’m not sure if this particular stimulus offered by the Democrats is the right thing (there are a lot of strings attached that I don’t agree with, as there were on the first one of these things), but SOME sort of stimulus is certainly going to be needed in the next month or so to keep the economy from cratering further and also to keep the people going. Right now, our system is really showing how much of a house of cards everything is, and we are one more blow away from free fall.
I’d amend that to " it is [del]not[/del] likely to [del]pass[/del] be ignored by the Republican-controlled Senate."
McConnell got everything he wanted in the earlier bills; Pelosi had leverage then but has none now. Why should Mitch give this bill the time of day?
(In response to XT’s post, which I largely agree with, I don’t think the Dems are doing this for show. I think they mean well, and they certainly put the time and effort into this bill that suggests that they mean this as a serious piece of legislation, rather than a bill for PR’s sake.
But all too often, when I see what the Dems are or aren’t doing, Casey Stengel’s “Can’t anybody here play this game?” plaint comes to mind.)
In a presidential election year the head of the senate is not going to ignore the will of his incumbent presidential candidate. Trump wants his name on another letter. This will pass but certainly not in its current form.
There’s another big difference between getting $25- 30 an hour from UI vs. from working. If you normally go health insurance through your job, but now you have to pay for it out of pocket, that’s going to take a giant chunk out of your budget. I am not working right now (not because of COVID reasons), and it cost almost $700/month to add me as a spouse to Tom Scud’s employer-based health insurance (they don’t subsidize dependents). It would have cost more than double that if, say, we had kids and he were laid off and we had to cover everyone via COBRA.