White House, Senate Agree on a $2 Trillion Wuhan Coronavirus Stimulus Package
It has “a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home.”
“We have a deal,” announced White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland a little after midnight.
After a week of screaming and shouting, the White House and Senate agreed on a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.
From Fox News:
The unprecedented economic rescue package would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home.
One of the last issues to close concerned $500 billion for guaranteed, subsidized loans to larger industries, including a fight over how generous to be with the airlines, given that Democrats wanted them to abide by new carbon emissions restrictions. Hospitals would get significant help as well.
Schumer told his colleagues that “Democrats are ready to give our unanimous consent to speed up the consideration of the bill and get the job done.“
If no Republicans object to the bill, “the Senate could clear the bill without a formal roll call vote.”
One Republican source described Schumer’s move as “a face-saving exercise” because he wanted “to ‘take credit’ for a GOP bill that he filibustered for ‘small ball’ alterations.”
The Senate will meet at 12 pm ET today. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “did not set a time for a vote.” The rules state a procedural vote must “happen at 1 p.m. ET, unless the Senate scraps that vote.”
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he hopes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “takes it up and passes as-is.”
The Washington Times has some details of the bill:
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Comments
Uh huh. My employer has been closed by order of the Mayor of San Antonio. Will any of this “bailout” help me pay the rent next week? No? Then what good is it?
Rusty, that depends entirely on whether you work for a Democratic progressive cause. Are you an abortionist by chance? If you are then you will be fine.
What will Pelosi do? Is it true that the new villain in Bond 25 is called “Pelosi Galore”?
Good news but the morning futures are all over the place. From up 465 to down 130 to now just up 40. I guess the market is waiting to see if Pelosi and AOC throw a monkey wrench into the works.
After this is over with the numbers of passengers on airplanes will be down. That carbon emissions limit on the airline industry might take care of itself. What bothers me is making it mandated.
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I didn’t get the impression that the Socialist-Democrat wish list item of 2025 limits on airline carbon actually made it into the bill the Senate will vote on. Do you have a link to information that the Senate bill does contain that provision?
We have these very nice dishes that we use on holidays. We call those dishes “China.” Are we being racist? Thanks in advance.
Only if you eat “Chinese Takeout” on those dishes.
I wonder how much of the execrable Pelosi’s wish list made it through to the final bill.
This is just the Senate bill. The House can accept, propose their own, or go to a House/Senate committee to change. Pelosi will most likely do what she does best.
Correct–and I’m wondering whether the Senate caved to any of her extortion in their version.
If ballot harvesting did, we’re toast.
Does the federal government have the authority to mandate how the states conduct elections, outside of the Voting Rights Act? Seems like Red States could take this to Court. If not, I’d like to see states nullify meddling in their voting procedures by ignoring the law. What is the federal government going to do? Send in the Army to mail absentee ballots?
Free State Paul,
Congress can set conditions for Federal elected offices; President, Vice president, SEN, HoR under time, place and manner authority.
States, counties/parish and municipal elections are the province of the individual State/territory unless they have devolved authority for local elections to the local government.
I don’t think congress has such power for presidential elections. The constitution says each state shall appoint its electors “in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct”. Congress has tried to get around this by offering safe harbor to electors from states that choose to comply with the rules it sets; but a state is still free to ignore those rules, and if congress has no grounds on which to reject the state’s electors it will have to count them.
But for congressional elections, yes. “The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators.” Congress has done so, and that is the law of the land.
Doesn’t mean all of the money will be spent. If, as Trump is predicting, the economy is back to full speed by the end of April, most of the predicted unemployment won’t happen. There is no incentive for companies to not keep their employees employed.
I’m more concerned about whether Manchurian Nancy got any concessions for her stunt.
And what more concessions she expects to get her to do her job.
I thought Obama’s $787B was horrible. This has bad news written all over it.
I can’t say I feel comfortable about it either, but this is an entirely different circumstance that is being worked on. This will hopefully give aid to keep businesses open and assist workers who have been forced out of work by the government causing panic over this virus.
We are not in a winning position right now, many people will be suffering from this action to remove freedom by our state governments.
With Obama’s stimulus it was a total sham for lining the pockets of donors for shovel ready jobs that didn’t exist. I’m not sure if this massive debt will do what it is being said to do, but it might be something to help bring the country back up to a normalized setting.
We shall see how it goes, but a lot of the success for this lies with ending the shutting down of the country. This won’t help families that are without jobs, it may be enough to help bring back a normal economic return after the shut downs slow.
Fortunately for the world President Present wasn’t face with an actual problem that was actual life and death.
Otherwise he would have fucked this up even worse than the virus itself.
Oh hang on…he was! Does anyone recall the panic and hysteria during the 2009 swine flu pandemic?
You know…the pandemic that killed up to a half million people world wide and it wasn’t until ONE THOUSAND Americans were dead before Barry The Baby Jesus Obama finally got off his arse and did anything.
Funny how the media kept things so quiet when their boy was in office wasn’t it. But here we have a mere handful of deaths and they are deliberately whipping up hysteria because they…well…just hate America and Americans who don’t vote the right way.
Perhaps this is necessary, but the inflationary affect is likely to be huge. Further, if unemployment it’s temporarily set at 100% of one’s normal wages (I am unclear on if that is the case), it has a destructive effect on morale. How would you like to be dragging into a tiring job every day knowing that someone who arranged to get laid off is getting their full pay.
I believe the consequences of the cascade effect of less consumption and bankrupted businesses would be something on the scale of the Civil War, and we don’t have the morale to sustain that level of calamity. So if it’s a choice between watching and waiting versus doing too much, I’ll take the risk of doing too much.
But we also know what inflation does, we can look at the waste a decade of the 70s and early 80s until Inflation was killed and therecovery began. That inflation was based on far far less spending than we are considering now. Major inflation’s consequence, think of the letters V, W, and Z.
This will be a test of Modern Monetary Theory. (Look it up.)
As someone who studied economics 45 years ago, MMT appears to me to be nonsense. If I had submitted it as my honors thesis, I would have gotten an “F”
However, I also would have gotten an “F” if I had predicted the US could run a trade deficit for over 40 years, run up a national debt of trillions, and still have essentially 0% inflation and a strong dollar. So who knows? Maybe “helicopter money” is the answer?
Excellent point. However, as long as the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency we have been able to do this, how much longer is the true question.
Then again the dollar ain’t likely to be superseded by the Chinese currency nor the Euro based on recent events. Every fiat currency is based on trust. No currency is trusted more than the U.S. dollar. Though with the only real alternatives being China or Euro that isn’t a high hurdle.
I don’t like the $2T price tag either, but what would a depression – something close to the 1930s depression – cost us in the long run? Not just in lost wages and tax revenue from workers and businesses as well as the massive welfare that would be needed to keep people from dying in the streets.