Clock Just Ran Out on $600 in Weekly Unemployment Benefits
As noted earlier today the Clock Just Ran Out on $600 in Weekly Unemployment Benefits while Republicans debated alligator sausage, literally.
Moments ago, the Republicans finally reached a decision internally, but it’s one that will not fly with Democrats.
GOP to Propose Aid Bill With Extra Jobless Benefits Set to Expire
Wall Street Journal reports GOP to Propose Aid Bill With Extra Jobless Benefits Set to Expire.
After days of disagreements between the White House and GOP lawmakers, Republicans are set to release their proposal for the next coronavirus relief bill on Monday with millions of Americans on the verge of losing expanded unemployment benefits.
Lawmakers now have little time before the $600 weekly supplement to jobless benefits ends. In negotiations with Democrats, three months before the election, an agreement on unemployment insurance might prove to be the most difficult to reach.
Benefits Have Already Expired
I do not understand such comments. Benefits ended today.
The last full week in July ends Saturday July 25 for most state UI programs. And that is when the benefits expire, not July 31.
Republican Proposal Details
- Eliminate the $600 weekly benefit and replace that with a means test to rejigger benefits so that they replace roughly 70% of a worker’s former wages.
- Another round of direct $1,200 payments to would be sent to the same group of Americans as the last round—$1,200 to individuals with adjusted gross incomes below $75,000 and married couples making less than $150,000. Payments would be gradually reduced for incomes above those levels before they are phased out entirely.
- $100 billion in aid to schools and universities and additional money for coronavirus testing.
- State and local governments would get no additional aid, but more freedom on how to spend previous money.
- The Republican bill would make it harder to successfully sue businesses, schools and health-care providers in coronavirus-related cases.
- Estimated total cost of about $1 trillion
Cap Assistance
“It’s going to cap the assistance at a level that is consistent with people going back to work,” Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, said of the Republican proposal on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Bickering Might Last Weeks
Democrats will be incensed by points 1 and 5.
Deal Unlikely or Impossible Before Benefits Expire?
Bipartisan negotiations—which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has said he expects to take at least a few weeks—are unlikely to yield an agreement before the supplement jobless benefit ends.
Again, I truly do not understand such comments.
Benefits just expired.
Unless a deal is worked out this week and made retroactive, there will be missed checks.
What If?
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggested on ABC’s “This Week” that Republicans might try to pass a smaller package, which would include extended unemployment insurance, and then “negotiate on the rest of the bill in the weeks to come.” Democrats have rejected that approach.
Didn’t the Republicans just reject that approach as well?
We find out Monday. Trump could change his mind overnight
Advantage Democrats
Because of Republican delays, Democrats can hold out for more and blame Republicans for all of it.
Under this scenario, they would agree to a deal after a couple of weeks, then blame Trump and the Republican Senators for the difference between $600 and the 70% replacement.
Philosophically Speaking
Philosophically, people should not make more being unemployed than employed.
Politically speaking, the Republicans just stepped on a landmine.
Democrats Favored to Win the Senate
Earlier today I commented, Democrats Favored to Win the Senate.
This update will not help the Republican cause. Please click on the above link for details.
Trump Will Lose to Biden
For analysis of why Trump will lose to Biden, please see Only 13 Percent of Voters are Still Undecided
Republican bickering can easily turn things into a Democrat tidal wave.
Mish
Maybe the Republican leaders want to lose the election so they can get their party back. Trump is destroying their future.
We don’t want our swamp party back… you shouldn’t want yours either. Trump is the FUTURE of America!!!
The democrats are trying to issue in socialism and using these payments as bribes for the fools.
It is a fact that if you subsidize something you get more of it. If you subsidize people not working, more people will chose not to work…..
“Philosophically, people should not make more being unemployed than employed.”
Philosophically, the economy should never have been shut down. It has never been done in the history of human commerce. Common sense has been thrown to the wind.
“A strikingly odd feature of media rhetoric during these terrible months has been the silencing of voices that speak of immunity as the way to defeat a virus of this sort. AIER has reported them when they appear but, as a seriously disgruntled reader of the New York Times, I can tell you that immunities via antibodies have not made their coverage much at all.”
That quote (uncredited except to “a seriously disgruntled reader of the New York Times”) is by a badly uninformed/ill-informed person who doesn’t seem to realize, or has deliberately ignored, the many reports that have all confirmed that any individual immunity to SARS-COV-2 that exists after recovery is so short-lived that it offers very little, if any, hope at all for any kind of “herd immunity”.
Quoting it in your post makes you look just as uninformed/ill-informed.
They also NEVER talk about how the enormous amount of testing has increased the number of cases, nor will you EVER hear them talk about how the death rates are about 1/10th of what they were at it’s peak. This is a slightly worse version of the seasonal flu, yet the media and the looney left’s reaction is a million times more “hysterical”.
“Trump Will Lose to Biden”
Or not. This isn’t 2016.
A lot can happen between now and election day.
I LOVE IT that they are so confident. It’s panning out to be a leftist HARD crash, just like in 2016. I’ve always loved watching cocky people get pummeled.
As a conservative, I welcome the end of the Republican party. They currently do not reflect any of my conservative principles. Best option is to let it burn and start over.
Yeah, but that will make for a rough 4-12 years
More than that. Trump doesn’t go away even after he loses. He and his followers will own the Republican party and work to divide the country for decades to come.
You mean like Obama and Hillary. The terrorist two that have done everything in their power to destroy our country
I hope this spells the end of the Republican party. Europe and Asia has some form of 60% to 80% wage replacement. $600 x 30Million = 18Billion. Yet I see a fat stimulus 1 trillion bill filled special interest crap.
DUDE… dream on! Sanity will never “leave”. Republicans control state governorships, state houses, state senates, the Senate, the POTUS and the SCOTUS. The ONLY government branch that is blue is the House. Google it. The Republican party after Obummer was as strong as it has ever been. With all this leftist lunacy, I think you need to worry more about the end of the Dem party or should I say the new Communist party in this country. Society is only getting older too and with age comes wisdom and with wisdom comes a change in party from Dem to Repub. I was a Dem once… when I was in college and I was young and STOOOPID!!!
Seriously though, Cruz is shouting out that he knows tons of people that are not going back to work after they were told to come back while on on unemployment. Why dont these guys ever explain that once you make the choice to not come back, you are no longer eligible for unemployment. You cannot turn down your employer without losing your unemployment benefits. Its on the application, yet they spread misinformation to the media.
Not true. All you have to do is claim you don’t feel safe going to work or you have to watch your kids and you continue to collect your benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
So then we need to pay attention to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistant stats to find out who won’t go back to work. Great info ! Would they loose their state unemployment payments in this case?
I don’t believe anything Cruz says.
I’m just sick of working for less than unemployed make.
I am sick of being a 100% disabled vet for life and being told that the unemployed part time 16 year old teenager at McDonalds “needs” more income fron UI than we disabled vets get. I mentioned that at Pelosi’s twitter page and some dick answered back he only gets $500 so I should be happy with $716 per week. I used to be happy with it till I found out there are little kids with milk moustaches on their upper lips being paid more in unemployment than the government pays your disabled vets, so I am now like FUCK this, if unemployed people have to have an extr $600 per week to get by on top of the stimulus money and regular UI I am not settling for that low income bullshit anymore.
For whatever the reasons, this country has often treated its Vets pretty disgracefully as a whole.
I agree… that is a bunch of SHYT that my taxpayer dollars are going towards paying people more than they were making at the other jobs and incentivizing them to not work. This is PRECISELY way we should never allow government to run things, i.e. they are INCOMPETENT!!! And guess which party is ALL ABOUT big gov? DEMOCRATS!!!
I’m sure you are aware of the latest Cato Survey, which shows 77% of conservatives are afraid to voice their opinion, while 58% of strong Liberals have no problem bloviating on what they believe – naturally, because it’s supported in the establishment media. https://www.cato.org/publications/survey-reports/poll-62-americans-say-they-have-political-views-theyre-afraid-share
These results are worse than in 2016, which will explain ONCE again why you are wrong this time, as well.
To prove my point – USA Today seems worried about Biden’s VP pick falling short – https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/07/15/joe-biden-falling-short-outreach-women-color-group-warns/5414429002/.
IF BIDEN WAS IN SUCH A COMMANDING LEAD, THE VP PICK WOULD CERTAINLY NOT MATTER. THE ONLY WAY BIDEN WINS IS MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD, WHICH DEMS DON’T MIND, BECAUSE FOR THEM, THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS.
Now they are talking about 200 a week.
I have always been a republican and am very conservative but I can not believe the way they are handleing this.I don’t understand why they don’t just give the 600,help the people,stimulate the econmy and live to fight another day so to speak.It is only until January and is not like giving in on a Supreme Court judge.The virus is on the rise and the GOP is going home and screw the rest.If Trump doesn’t step in and do something it is obvious he does not care about the people and I hope it cost him the election along with many other Republicans.This is total bull shit.It seems that right now multi tasking to the GOP is having both their head and thumb up their ass at the same time.
Suppose the Mcdonalds down the street laid off half their $10/hr employees. The half that still work get $10/hr. The half that stays safe at home and does what they want all day get $19/hr. You don’t see the problem?
What kills me is that high schoolers working at that McD’s are raking in more on UI/PUA than your disabled vets get.
Because we can’t just continue to put things on credit cards. Our debt is off the chain. We just printed $3T a couple months ago. This is NOT sustainable. It’s friggin’ time to get back to work and get this country going!!! Also, making government assistance come in at 70% of their former wage is fair. Why should people make more on welfare (MY MONEY) then they made at their previous job that they were laid off from? That’s pure insanity. Also, allowing our free loading, “want everything for free” society should not be allowed to frivolously sue businesses over covid. Covid is a natural disaster that can’t be controlled. Businesses shouldn’t have to pay for that… again, it’s pure insanity and will bog down our judicial system with free loaders trying to get rich off others’ merits.
Tell the business owners that can’t find employees because they are all sucking on a big welfare check. The dems knew they would destroy businesses with this hand out and the more people on the take, the more voters they get. Massive corruption. Wake up. You can’t hand out free money without consequences.
Including an incentive payment for folks that return to work versus a temporary increase in the unemployment benefit suggests the GOP believes there are jobs out there for everyone that wants one. With over 30,000,000 unemployed that is hardly the case. I don’t doubt there are a few unemployed that might find a way not to return to work in order to receive an additional $600 but I have to believe that number would be a small fraction of the 30,000,000. A lot of these jobs are never coming back or won’t be back for a couple of years or more so any job offers ought to trump remaining on unemployment indefinitely.
Many of the jobs slated to disappear would have done so anyway, just lower over time as automation and robots took its toll. But now the job losses have been brought forward.
This is the kind of thing that politicians should have been thinking of when they all decided to shut down the economy to avert CV19 hospitalizations and deaths instead of blindly responding to the media driven virus fear and panic. Actions have consequences.
JoJo – as dangerous as this virus is the job losses would have occurred anyway with or without shutdowns. In fact I would hazard a guess that here in NY, the job losses would have been worse as panic set in over the virus spread and number of deaths. Even now a lot of folks are reluctant to let down their guard and revert back to semi normal activities.
Another consideration, the eviction moritorium is already up. Here is a map I found at CNBC showing the states and the percentage of renters who cannot meet their rent payments. Notice that the swing state of Ohio is at the top of that list with nearly 60% unable to pay. Florida is over half at 51%, and a number of other states are over 50, but not one single traditionally blue states is over 40 except CT at 41%.
This is going to be the real problem going forward. Because not only will a majority of these people be unable to come up with the rent due and will therefore be evicted but the landlords are not going to get the money owed them either. So some percentage are going to get foreclosed themselves.
Yes and once you have had an eviction your rental record is ruined, you will find it very hard to find a rental in future and if you ever do you pay astronomical deposits. This actually should boost home buying because renting did not work out so well for close to half of all renters when things got tough through no fault of their own.
Ohio is at 41%. West Virginia is at 59%. Your point is pretty simplistic and I don’t think you can make such a correlation. Blue states might be giving more aid. How do the counties within each state add up or contribute to the overall number. Texas is red, but it could be that the bigger cities, which are mainly blue in many red states, are driving much of the rent crisis. I don’t know, but I do know that your observation is too simplistic to make a clear scientific or meaningful correlation.
Bottom line, is that there are REAL WORLD consequences for shutting down an economy. If people can’t pay rent, then guess what… it’s time to “cowboy up” and get back to work!!! Stop believing the fake news hysteria. This virus kills old people and the high risk. Let them stay home while the rest of us hold down the fort. Instead of giving 320M people welfare checks, give them to the few million who are older and high risk. That’s probably a couple $100M instead of a couple trillion. Common sense!!!
The payments to support laid off workers is $18 billion per week and overly generous in my opinion, and the $1,200 stimulus checks round one was about $290 billion.
All combined they do not equal a trillion, yet anyway. And here is something I have never heard mentioned – had this never happened what would those same people have earned? Far more than the government as put into the economy for them, yet trillions have been spent in the last 5 months or so, and something like 80% of that has gone to businesses, and smaller businesses have paid it to larger businesses that supply them so in the end all of that went to Wall Street shareholders who own those larger businesses.
As to rents and eviction/foreclosure. I stand by what I said, except yeah, as I was writing I looked at the wrong state/box and it is a good thing for Ohio yes? Still no matter what name is put to the state that is at nearly 60% that is a major problem.
Landlords or tenants are going to get royally screwed, and if it is mandated that evictions and foreclosures be halted for now then it will be banks that get it in the ass, not that I feel sorry for them, but some of that fallout is going to land on your head and mine. . Right here in my own community I am seeing UHauls, Penske trucks, and other removal vans as well as flatbeds taking away nearly new cars. A few will be going for repair, but mostly they are going back to the bank. Once you get into repossessions and evictions it is damned hard to get out of what will be a downward spiral. What I am trying to say is that this is not a microeconomic problem but a macroeconomic problem, one that will just keep getting bigger and bigger. This will morph into a depression and the way the GOP is handling it guarantees this. Much as the GOP government under Hoover guaranteed the Great Depression with their austere moral rectitude.
Eventually those moritoriums have to be lifted then what? You demand tenants pay the thousands in back rents in arrears? It will take the average person until middle age or retirement to get caught up because they have so little income after monthly expenses and the back rent will have to be treated much as student loans are now. Something they will pay on for decades.
It’s perfect… just starve the unfortunates for a few weeks so they get all rioty right before the election, and then distribute the trump checks. Instant win!
Confetti.
panem et circenses.
And, grub ….
70% is still a big incentive to not work. If you go back to work the effective tax rate is probably 75-80%.
Agree, but that’s EXACTLY what the Dems want. They know if the economy is in the toilet, then Trump can never win. Thus the faux outrage for this big ole covid nothingburger. I got $2200 last time and I make over 6 figures now, but I was out of work for much of 2018. Stupid!!!
it would take most states eight to 20 weeks to move to a system of awarding weekly benefits on a sliding scale
…Ancient state unemployment systems that struggled to handle the first round of COVID-19 relief payments could take months or more to adopt a White House proposal for modifying the benefits, according to memos obtained by NPR.
Such a lag could mean that the roughly 30 million people currently collecting pandemic-related unemployment benefits would see their income drop from a weekly average of $900 to an average of $300 per week.
The proposal would cut emergency unemployment benefits to roughly 70% of a person’s lost wages — a more complicated calculation than the current, flat $600.
Critics have warned since March that such a proposal would undermine efforts to speed relief to millions of people out of work due to the coronavirus. The potential delays are so significant that the U.S. Department of Labor told Congress in May that it “strongly” opposed such a change because states would find it “exceedingly difficult if not impossible to implement.”
The National Association of State Workforce Agencies told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that it would take most states eight to 20 weeks to move to a system of awarding weekly benefits on a sliding scale based on the worker’s wages before losing their job, according to a copy of the memo obtained by NPR….
“it would take most states eight to 20 weeks to move to a system of awarding weekly benefits on a sliding scale”
…
Yeah, that was the first thing that crossed my mind. Likely, big reason they want to rush out next round of $1200 … tide households over till FUBAR (sorta) fixed of what each household’s UE benefit will be.
We can make thousands of stupid social apps that work great, but the systems our civilization depends on run on patched together 70s tech. Another gift of capitalism.
Didn’t this same sort of thing happen in the 2008/209 Great Recession where state UI programs couldn’t deal with the Federal laws extending unemployment based on percentage of unemployed?
And at that time, everyone was up-in-arms about the archaic state UI computer systems. So here we are 10-12 years later and nothing has changed.
The Feds have to mandate that states update their computer systems. Would also be great if they could force standardization in benefits across all states but doubt that could be enforced.
After the 2008 recession, Oregon received something like $60MM in federal grants to upgrade its UI system. They moved that money into PERS and didn’t change the UI system.
4 months after the COVID shutdowns, something like 200,000 Oregonians haven’t received their first unemployment check (my wife is one of them… she only received acknowledgement of her PUA claim about 9 days ago).
The final bill will likely be at least several hundred pages.
Can’t wait to see what goodies hidden in bill for insiders.
never let a tragedy go to waste…
Funny, how you can’t find info on the “fat” hidden in this bill. Both sides of the swamp creatures like to hide this from America. Let’s pass a bill where “fat” is not allowed in ANY bills. It’s so “greasy” when politicians do that. Makes me feel dirty.
As someone who has always voted Republican I can safely say that in my opinion the GOP has completely self destructed. Moscow Mitch and the rest of the GOP leadership have allowed Trump to destroy the Republican Party. The GOP needs to lose the presidency and the senate if that’s what it takes to gut the Republican Party leadership. Also heard that clown Kudlow yesterday still talking up a V shaped recovery. This reminds me of an old joke. What is red and has an IQ of 120? Trump and his entire cabinet.
I’m skeptical of any “always voted Republican” claims from people who refer to him as “Moscow Mitch.”
And I can handle Dems controlling 2 of the 3, House, Senate and Presidency. But if they control all 3 at a time this critical, the country is f*cked.
The current leadership of the Republican Party is abhorrent. Can think of much worse names to call them.
maybe you need to re-evaluate your positions because if you don’t LOVE what is going on in this country with Trump, then you honestly aren’t conservative/republican. If you can look at what the Dems are doing right now and say that the GOP has “self destructed”, then from my perspective, you are completely clueless. You liked the Bush’s Republican party better than what we got going on now??? Come on man!!!
Philosophically, people should not make more being unemployed than employed.
Politically speaking, the Republicans just stepped on a landmine.
Right there is the heart of it. I am a democrat (mostly) and I can tell you right now that democrats do not seek to hold GOP feet to the fire on items 1 and 5 without possibility of compromise, with item one they simply do not want the GOP to end UI which as the GOP has said is what they really want. They want to terminate the extra UI benefit in favor of a return to work bonus to incentivize people to go back to work.
Barring that they want to cut the UI to $100 or so, but they gave up on that pretty quickly. I do think their new idea of a 70% wage replacement means test is a good one except for one thing, it would cost more to impliment and cause delays so long that they might as well just give out the $600 which is far too generous. Democrats said so back when this was begun and the $600 number was chosen. They held that it would be akin to having a tax deadline day every Friday for tens of millions of unemployed. Because a lot of people collecting the federal benefit are still making a smaller salary with fewer hours but qualified for the PUA. You would need a bureaucracy larger than all 50 states unemployment offices to do a percentage replacement benefit.
So, they must compromise on a flat rate amount per week. I agree that $600 is wildly out of line and would be happy to see $200 per week. The $600 would be generous by most states standards even if that was the only form of unemployment these people got. States average about $450-500 max benefit. If your state like Florida only gives you a couple hundred per week you need to vote in a different state government.
Then with item 5 we have a different kettle of fish entirely and I am not sure this one will be so easily solved, nor is it likely that people will understand it. There are documented examples, many of them, where employees were fairly forced to work cheek by jowel together in unsafe environments and got Covid, some died, others disabled and possibly for life, we do not know yet what some of the long-term effects are. The democrats have said over and over they are not going to give blanket immunity to firms against law suits and that is a seriously fat crimson red line for them. Because while immunity would help business get back on it’s feet it would also protect the worst employers out there who would do anything to their employees for a buck.
This is another case where compromise is required and could easily be done, in the end will be done anyway so it behooves both sides to do their best to make a compromise now, and I think the democrats have said they are willing to discuss it, but the GOP has been unwilling to even think about compromise. We know they have a history of demanding tort reform that favors employers over employees going way back into my childhood at least.
They could simply stiffen current law to say that in the event an employer can prove they did all that was prudent and practical to protect the health of their workers but the employees got sick anyway those shall be exempt from lawsuits. Then most workers will still be covered as a group under current law, but, for those random few that got sick and damaged when the employer did all they practically could, we would set up a trust fund for such survivors so that they are not left damaged withou any sort of compensation, possibly make them eligigible for SS. After all, those workers are the leading edge of the economy as the ones still willing to work. If work results in permanent injury or death they SHOULD be compensated appropriately. Yet the GOP is correct that companies that did their best to avoid harm to workers should also be immune to punishment. Where they get it wrong is they want to also protect businesses that do not care if they harm employees or not, some would even harm them intentionally if it means 1% on their profit loss statements this quarter and we all know that.
All the democrats are asking for is a fair compromise and the GOP is rapidly getting to the point where it must agree and that is sort of fun to see. Right now they are delaying and whimpering around the stiffnecked Moscow Mitch seeing their careers get vaporized. They are seeing polls that are basically saying not only will the GOP lose in an epic history making landslide in November, they may be witnessing the end of their party as it has been for 100 years. Their brand is rotting and falling off the tree.
In a true national emergency the optics for the GOP are horrible, they are doing everything they can to argue and delay and force shutdown of any aid to people over what amount to arcane and legally dense views that they are carrying in their teeth like a pit bull with a juicy bone. And the worst part for them is that their party leader – Trump – is providing zero leadership at all. Those businesses that had not adopted a mask rule before now, here that would be Winn-Dixie and Home Depot, while all others have, did not because they know Trump supporters would simply be unwilling to wear one, that puts them in the bullseye of far right resentment. They are not capable of enforcing such.
I went to both Winn-Dixie and Home Depot yesterday and saw their new policy, and HD was actually manning the entrance and handing out free masks to people who did not have them, as well as hand sanitizers and advice on staying safe. Mind you I do not want to wear a mask either, but sometimes you just cannot always get your own way can you, and adults know that. Still about 1/3 of customers put them on in order to gain entry to the facility but then just tore them off and looked about sort of wild eyed daring anyone to say anything about it. This is the south, at least a couple were packing weapons so nobody dare challenge them lest we be the evening news’s feature story. They just do not get that they are the small minority and their bullshit is going to be reflected at the polls in 99 days.
If they struck a deal today and it got signed tomorrow and went into effect for this week, there would be no gap.
And if a bull had tits it would be a cow!
The deal will have the goal of increasing the deficit so you eventually get spending cuts after covid. McConnell initially wanted state and local governments to use the bankruptcy provisions to restructure debt and spending. I would look for more legislation that brings down the economy in blue states while giving red states more funding. In a perverse way, Republicans can win long term if the economy is worse in blue states and cause more problems for democratic governors and mayors in those states.
C_O…. The deficit?
That stopped being relevent about the time George Bush took us from surplus (at least technically on paper) to deficit in 2001. And in an emergency like Covid you cannot put some ink on a balance sheet ahead of the lives of millions. If you do not understand that then you will in 99 days when Trump gets 35% of the national vote. Because that is apx. the percentage that constitutes his base. Those that will vote for him no matter what.
Your analysis has a flaw (a couple really) when it comes to the GOP winning if the blue states are harmed while the red get more federal largess per capita because they have very small budgets that give their residents the short shrift the way Florida has held it’s unemployment max to $257, and that is a mean paltry sum by any standards, the only states lower are those that are hard red states and even a few of those have much higher max benefits, even KY is like $550 per week.
First and biggest of those errors is that the election is now just 99 days away, the voters have short memories but not that short. And, early voting in states that have it, most do, starts in 49 days in one state (PA), several more at 45 or46 days before the election, many more at 30 to 40, so that deadline is actually a lot closer than you think.
That means those states have that much time till a blue wave gets locked in. There will be people voting in the 2020 election in less than 8 weeks.
The business about them being able to win if blue states get whacked fiscally without aid from the Feds while red states are rewarded for bing skinflints is off base. Remember that 85% of Americans live in urban areas harder hit because they have much higher population (and minority) density. That includes most independents who will be the deciding factor really. You harm those blue urban regions at a very high price politically. Remember also that most red voters also live in those states. The so called “red states” where an overwhelming majority are GOP voters also have much smaller population and connot by themselves capture the electoral college. In every election it takes Florida, Ohio, both swing states, as well as Texas their perennial big state to get those EC votes for them. This time Trump will not take either Ohio or Florida as it is, and will even have a coin toss chance in Texas. The first two would make it impossible to fill that electoral college hole, there are not enough other states to swing without them. Lose Texas and you might as well hang a sign in the GOP headquarters saying GONE OUT OF BUSINESS OVER COVID!
I somehow doubt Democratic powerbrokers like Mike Madigan, needs much in the way of Republican help to make their economies worse…
We have 4 months until the election. The average voter has a 1 week memory limit.
About 3 months + 1 week
The average voter WILL remember not getting a $600 check
They will also remember who to vote for to get that cheque.
Most Republican voters didn’t get that $600 check anyway, so no loss to them. The $600/weekly checks were for the unemployed poors, not the business owners.
You are kidding, right? Take a look at which states form the GOP base.
Jojo and TIAB; that is entirely irrelevent because we already know that the GOP base of 35-37% of voters are going to vote Trump and republican NO MATTER WHAT! That is not even a part of the discussion and has not been in 44 years.
However; this time will see the largest loss for the right since 1976. You know you have a bad president when even a guy like Jimmy Carter beats your fellow. Poor Ford, he was likable enough, but, he was so tainted by Watergate and unbearable inflation he could not even beat Carter. Carter then went on to be a one term president because he could not beat inflation and indeed diid not even give the impression that it was a priority for him. Well, this year the string of one term presidents is about to get extended to include Trump. As with Raygun people did not vote FOR him, but against the other guy.
On top of all this you have most democrats that still believe that the 2016 election was stolen and nothing in life will stop them from going to vote for anyone but Trump the orange clown. I can assure that nearly every single person who vted for HRC and which are still alive, will be casting a ballot for Biden, and that makes it very hard to rig an election even with Tsar Vladimir’s help. Trump’s ONLY hope is to shut the election down which would very likely result in a second civil war, it would be unlawful seizure of government, a junta. Not that I would put it past him and methinks the unmarked cops/vans grabbing people illegally off the streets of Portland are a dry run for this. But it is not going to work in the long run because all he will succeed in doing is breaking America once and for all.
Actaully early voting starts in 49 days, that is Monday September 14. A mere 7 weeks from now. And memories are a lot longer than that when it comes to denying a lifeline. I agree with Mish on this, and will go further, voters who are not upset so usually just skip voting are now pissed off enough to make it a life mission to vote this time, and while we all know the GOP base of about 35-37% of voters will vote GOP anyway and not stay home, that is starting to look like all the votes the GOP will get. One thing is crystal clear, turn out will be extremely heavy by comparison to average years, a lot of that radical even rioting energy is going to get channeled into making sure no republican is reelected even when they vote in places where that dem vote is futile like Alabama.
This pandemic has been GROSSLY and NEGLIGENTLY botched from the beginning, and it is too late to turn that around now even if the GOP suddenly belatedly has realized that. If Moscow Mitch and the entire senate republican caucus goes live on national TV and throws Trump under the bus they will still lose the senate and with that any national power they had till now enjoyed.
Most states UI systems do not have the capacity for “means testing”.
Whooda thunkit, it’s just like mandating “back to school” without looking at the problems and not providing the funding.
Also, “means testing” is nothing more than Newspeak for handing wealth, influence and blowjobs to yet more tax feeders, and soon other leeches of the “consultant” variety.
If you are going to hand money taken from others to people, the only viable way to do it, is via a UBI/Citizen Salary. And to then ditch ALL the rest: From “unemployment benefits” to food stamps to pensions and social security. You just have to determine the amount, based on a percentage of taxes which has already been collected. Otherwise, it’s just another guaranteed-to-be ever increasing overspend.
The dems will reject the 70% plan because all those who weren’t high wage earners will get little to nothing or even a negative amount. Example: You grossed 500 per week. You get 325 unemployment. 70% of 500 is 350 which means under the republican plan you will go from $600 a week to $25.00 per week which is almost too funny. Pretty sure they just lost everything come november and will have all the time in the world to dine on alligator sausage.
Those that get hurt the most will be the low wage workers who were making say $400 per week before PUA and then got almost $1000 while sitting at home. Because they will get no federal help at all. I do not think there is a provision to have a PUA rate, they will simply not get any federal help at all, but still get their state UI. The only people to do well under this 70% plan will be those who have lost more than 30% of income and that is the middle class employees. But even then they are not going to do as well as with the $600 per week PUA unless that cap has been removed in the GOP plan, but if it has I have seen no mention of it. They are playing cagey about that. Hoping nobody will notice that between the 70% plan and the $600 max the total cost of the PUA will be more than halved.
As if the laws of electoral politics can be so easily repealed, you slash emergency payments to tens of millions during a grossly mishandled pandemic and tell yourself that accounting trickery and fingers crossed behind your back is going to be good enough to get you reelcted.
To me the question is if the economy is going to return “at some point” to anything like previous, and if so when. You either have a temporary wide support till then, or you have a scaled support designed to help people readjust to new economy. What you cannot really do is compensate indefinitely for an economy and jobs that won’t return. As we don’t know the answer to where the economy will or would be in a few months time, what we are left with is a guess and a lot of people in financial difficulty all seeing that the government has the means to alleviate that if it chooses. Even without pandemic they will still remember that government has the means to help them financially, and so why should a line be drawn due to pandemic when any other reason for financial distress would be as relevant.
Aside from that, either the dollar is pretty worthless because 2400 euros would seem like a lot of money for people to not do anything much, or everyone owes most of that in debt or rent. Maybe the US is just rich though, who knows.
Anda you said “Even without pandemic they will still remember that government has the means to help them financially, and so why should a line be drawn due to pandemic when any other reason for financial distress would be as relevant.”
That was how FDR became our only three term then four term president. Hoover and the republicans simply did not care and were totaly ignorant of the plight of the vast numbers and depth of the desperation of the depression. They still do not get it, this is way more than a horribly mishandled pandemic, it is a depression and just because it started one day in the spring does not mean that it can end one day this summer or fall or even with a vaccine, political bullshit is just not going to make it go away. The GOP holds the strings of power and block all attempts by the dem house to do anything. Voting starts in 7 weeks 6 days. The GOP cannot turn this around in that time, so their last resort will be to postpone the election. A postponement that will just become permanent and Trump said years ago he would do it if he wanted to, repeated as recently as last week.
I don’t understand the purpose of the $1,200 checks. Feels a little dirty accepting checks with DJT’s name on it right before the election. Seems like money should only be going to people that lost their job.
I do not understand those either – meant to comment on it
Second thought – there is always Vote Buying – does that work?
What about the financial repression with lower interest rates. As a senior who saved all his life my interest income is down 75%. Isn’t that like loosing 75% of a job with no unemployment. What about price increases on essential items like groceries.
It’s going to buy me a new set of tires on my car and get the front end aligned! Thanks Covid!
Time to toss this “fake” President in the dumpster. I am not in favor of the overly generous $600 additional unemployment benefit but I am in favor of limiting it to no more than the recipient’s weekly pay amount. With over 30,000,000 unemployed it is unconscionable that they did not have a bill ready to roll before the July 31st expiration date.
I will offer this, from Colorful Colorado: I am self employed, and when all this came down, assumed that that I was screwed because I would not be eligible for unemployment bennies. Then came the Feds Pandemic Unemployment plan, just for poor unfortunates like myself. The state unemployment folks have no manpower or expertise to calculate the incomes of the self employed, many of who use a corporate entity for their businesses, so they just awarded me the minimum of $283 per week, plus the extra $600. In my case, that adds up to about what I was making anyway. This is the most clueless proposal yet from a Federal government that seems to live on another planet. Billions for fat cats, but God forbid some unemployed dishwasher or freelancer, whose job is never coming back, receives a few peanut shells after Mnuchin and Kudlow have eaten all the peanuts.
While Covid-19 grows, Trump golfs, Senate goes on vacation. At least you could pretend you care….Remember way back…Dems and Reps used to compromise and get something we could agree on…, but now we just complain about each other and the people in the most need suffer.
Stop all our foreign adventures, bring our troops home, and then print enough money to support people for the next 3 months. After that, there should be a “Make Our Infrastructure Great Again” plan to bootstrap our economy.
That’s how you get reelected.
Are there any numbers on the people who would rather receive the benefit at the risk of having no job to return to (despite the huge unemployment) compared to those who would be nudged to go back to work if the benefit were smaller?
Seems like it might be an inconsequential thing in the bigger scheme of things (people getting money without performance).
Fuck’em.
The GOP is always the Party of Hate®.
Why is their default position: the lazy bums need to get off their fat asses?
Why is their default position: rich people are wonderful?
I hope the Dimocrats win bigly and send all the the Dumspter® voters to FEMA reëducation camps. Where they will catch the Corona virus and die.
Am I angry? Why, yes, I am.