Democrats to Change Eligibility for Direct Payments
Commenting on revised eligibility rules, Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of Senate Democratic leadership says “This is a fair way forward.”
President Biden signed off on the last-minute alterations to the direct payments, which would shrink the $1,400 checks to zero more quickly for individuals making more than $75,000 and married couples making more than $150,000, according to Democrats familiar with the changes.
“This is a fair way forward,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of Senate Democratic leadership, said of maintaining the income thresholds, but accelerating the speed at which checks are phased out. “I think that’s a reasonable compromise.”
Free Money Eligibility
The prior proposed phase out was $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for married couples.
Both the old proposal and the new fair way will hand out free money whether or not anyone was impacted by Covid or not.
Those who kept their job but worked at home come out blazingly ahead. Not only did those workers have reduced travel costs and lunch costs, they get free money on top of it.
This we define as a “fair way forward” for individuals. But what about cities?
$350 Billion Covid “Bailout” to States, Cities, and Counties
The $1.9 trillion proposed package awards $350 Billion to States, Cities, and Counties.
Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks, Via Zerohedge notes the Biggest Winners And Losers
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com finally located the $350 billion allocation, line-by-line, in a supplemental database hidden on the back end of the House Oversight Committee’s website.
We mapped the data to each of the 50 states. Click here to see how much taxpayer money Congress earmarked your hometown to receive from the COVID “relief” bill.
Congress tried to hide these line-by-line appropriations, but thanks to technology and the internet, you can search it for yourself.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats changed the allocation formula from being based on population to the unemployment rate. This change caused 23 states to gain $31.9 billion and 27 states to lose that funding. The four biggest winners were Democratic strongholds: California—which reaped an extra $6.7 billion; New York—which added another $6 billion; Illinois — increased by $2.1 billion; and New Jersey — a $2 billion increase.
Furthermore, we found that Puerto Rico received more funding at $4 billion than 22 states. Including an extra “plus up” from the previous CARES Act Covid aid bill, the District of Columbia received more funding at $2.3 billion than 13 states.
What About Cities?
- New York City received $4.3 billion, which is more money than 25 state governments.
- Chicago, with their bonds at junk status, was allocated $1.98 billion, an amount more than 12 state governments.
- Democrats apparently don’t believe anyone will object to giving big bailouts to prosperous towns. Beverly Hills, CA, will receive $6.3 million while the Hamptons, NY, will get $8.6 million. They’re followed by Key West, FL ($10.1 million); Greenwich, CT ($21 million); Oyster Bay, NY ($32.7 million); and Cambridge, MA ($65 million).
- The 50 richest places (Bloomberg) would receive $100 million in COVID-19 bailout funds. For example, Atherton, CA, the wealthiest city in America with an average household income of $525,000, received $1.3 million from the legislation.
- Hillsborough, CA, reaps $2.1 million from the bill even though it boasts a median home price of $5.8 million.
- Scarsdale, NY—the richest place on the East Coast—would get $2 million in “relief.”
- The wealthy county of Santa Clara, CA, is set to receive a whopping $385 million from the legislation. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the county has the highest median income of any county in California. The county seat is the city of San Jose, where the average home price tops $1 million.
American Rescue Plan
The American Rescue Plan of 2021 is “rescuing” individuals not at all impacted by Covid as well as the wealthiest cities in the country.
Allegedly, this is the “Fair Way” forward.
Mish
New York City is getting more money than 25 state governments. New York City has a larger population than 37 states. It sounds to me like New York City isn’t getting enough money.
And these jackasses are basing the means testing on 2019 (pre-COVID) incomes!
You cannot make this shiite up.
When money has a price of zero (interest rate) does that mean it has no value? Why not flush 3.8 trillion down the economic toilet, or 10 trillion? No one had to work for it in the first place. No one saved a dime of it. NO one is ever going to pay it back. No one cares that $1.9 trillion won’t stimulate production.
Oh wait; yields on the 10-year treasury are… and the repo market is…
OH FUDGE! We’re going to have a bowel movement the likes of which will not be forgotten.
MMT advocates agree with you.
Au contraire, it is the antithesis of MMT. Are you watching the bond market? It’s starting to cook. Perhaps the bond market is finally realizing that TVM really works: not only as yields approach zero, price goes through the roof–but the reverse is true.
The test will come when the Fed can’t hold rates down.
“We’re going to have a bowel movement “
courtesy of Jerome Bowell ?
Every dollar spent by the gov’t goes disproportionally to a group or groups. Why should this be any different?
This time it’s different…… 🙂
I believe the objective is to put money in the hands of people so they will spend it and create employment. Not just “rescue” unemployed people.
Wonder if Jerome has time to read a good book ?….. take his thumb off the F1 key rich people key for a while ……
“They all had the politics of horse thieves. He believed in the Republic as a form of government but the Republic would have to get rid of all of that bunch of horse thieves that brought it to the pass it was in when the rebellion started.
Was there ever a people whose leaders were as truly their enemies as
this one?”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
a little dated but greg mankiw has some good discussion points on the plan. he sees too much stimulus in the bill
Another liberal economist spouting more liberal crap. Even JM Keynes would turn in his grave.
I know a bunch of very wealthy third country nationals that have opted to acquire dual US and/or Canadian nationality. Although their children may be going to school in the US or Canada, they live in their country of origin because that is where their business is located. These individuals have enjoyed some serious pocket money that they rightly treat as “F**k” you money.
Debbie Stabenow, also known to her “constituents” as “The Avon Lady”. She’s like a kite. Only goes with the wind and just like one of the many politicians that rely on fairness, something that does not exist.
When do I get my check??
I’ll repost this article. CA is doing very well. The extra government money will mean more to disburse to the homeless and undocumented. Would be nice if they put some of the $$ to work fixing the damn roads here!
Virus Did Not Bring Financial Rout That Many States Feared
Grim forecasts held up for a few states, but many took in about as much tax revenue as before the pandemic — sometimes a lot more.
March 1, 2021, 12:20 p.m. ET
Fix the roads? Why bother when you can run a great scam like The Toll Roads…you get one of the highest taxes in the country but there’s not enough money to build roads.
Here they build roads with tax money and then give them away to the private sector toll companies….who liberally spread the graft around to the deciders.
I fail to see why married couples should get a double dip on the stimulus handouts unless they are filing two separate tax returns.
So people should be punished for getting married rather than living in sin? Interesting, please tell us more about your theories.
Another “theory” I have is that there is no such thing as sin and people who believe in religion are sub-intelligent.
But if there is no such thing as sin then there is no secret thrill when you commit one. You suck all joy out of life then.
And then the sins of the fathers could not be visited upon the sons…..and we all know that’s a thing.
The Old Testament says it goes down to the third and fourth generation. This is how I think about the US Civil War, btw. That’s exactly what happened in my family.
My family being from Ohio was on the other side so if it goes down to the fourth generation that could explain that my good fortune is not due to hard work and grit but because an ancestor got born on the other side of the state line and got brownie points as a consequence. Bummer!
Married people should have their stimulus payments cut in half because they’re stupid. Got it. Thanks.
State revenue losses are around $40B and they’ve already received a couple hundred billion to make up for it. Now another $350b on top? Sad.
those states that you mentioned give more money to DC and they receive in federal help. the Virtuous Red states take More money than they send the DC. they do deserve more money becuase they are the engines of the economy.
If they are so great and wonderful, why do they need the money?
they need the money hire back the public servants; money for vaccinations; money to put in peoples pockets. the best reasons, the US govt will not sit idbly by while people are hungry. it was done in 1929 and that will not repeated.
“The American Rescue Plan of 2021 is “rescuing” individuals not at all impacted by Covid as well as the wealthiest cities in the country.”
Everyone’s effected, the aftereffects are impossible to avoid.
A friend owns a business that has been booming throughout the COVID ordeal, but only recently he’s experiencing a slowdown because manufacturing delays finally caught up, Texas also exacerbated the problem.
He has to maintain payroll because he’s already too light on employee’s, cannot afford to lose anyone with the amount of contracts in his pipeline, supply delays have almost tripled, from 4 weeks shipping E.T.A. to more than 10 weeks.
While some sectors are less affected by economic shock, no one is truly “recession-proof”.
Won’t it all trickle-down anyway? /s
That trickle is not rain.
Houston and Harris County took the lion’s share in Texas, with the other urban counties and cities also getting a lot more than the rural counties…..but I guess that’s what I’d expect. I’m not sure Houston area needs 1.5B…but I’m sure they can spend it.
Austin and Travis county gets less than a third of that. San Antonio got a lot more than Austin
I have no way to parse this kind of stuff. None whatsoever.
Always thought this would be means tested. So when do we means test corporate welfare?
Never. The rich are above the law. And corporations are the richest people.
Give it a break. This is really about CYA so when the house of cards collapses they can say ‘we tried and the Republicans didn’t.’
I wonder how many people ‘Tribal Governments’ covers because they are getting an awful lot of money.
I also wonder how much money will be scammed from this 1.9 Trillion. I suspect a whole heck of a lot. Yahoo Finance had an article on it the other day saying it’s best to wait to file your taxes till after it passes in case you might go over one of the limits and get no money or else rush to file if you made far less and were suddenly under the limit.
On another note, it seems I have to constantly re-log into the site to post. Never had to do that till recently. It’s a huge PIA. Is there some setting to keep me logged in and not needing an email to verify I’m logged in?
I have noticed that too. Constant relogging in. The Maven has not figured out why.
Although they do not know why, some changes are coming that are known to fix it.
I am unsure when I am scheduled. One hangup for MishTalk is the number of comments I have and how to migrate them.
Are you going to exit this platform? Because it sucks greatly.
It seems to happen to me mostly when I am in the middle of typing a long reply post to someone. All of a suddenly the browser will refresh (maybe someone else just posted?) and I’ll lose my entire comment if I haven’t saved it recently with a CTRL-C. At that point I am logged out and have to re-verify via email to post.
I’m now going to change to typing replies in notepad++ and then cut/pasting them so I am not spending so long typing in the reply box.
Maybe try another browser? I don’t seem to be having that problem with Chrome on Win10.
That happened to me a lot here usually just before I post a comment that would have totally destroyed the argument of an adversary and brought you all to my side the page refreshes and I lose it. The inspiration once gone is impossible to recover. I hope they fix it soon.
Exactly.
That happens to me. I type it out on a draft email now then.
Copy and paste it to maven once it’s done.
I obviously didn’t do it with this post, ignore the full stop after “then”.