Stimulus: Dim hope for new checks, unemployment aid
In the spring, “elected officials put aside partisan differences to quickly pass a massive, across-the-board economic stimulus,” said Dan Primack and Alayna Treene in Axios.com. Now “we’re back to the old normal, even though many remain desperate for assistance.” A stimulus bill favored by Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—nicknamed the “skinny stimulus” for its limited goals and funding—died in the Senate, likely putting an end to the prospect of additional direct federal economic aid before the election. Democrats had pushed for a broader bill, with an extension of a $600-a-week federal unemployment supplement, while Republicans were lukewarm on the whole concept and unwilling to “meet in the middle.”
Federal pandemic unemployment assistance was “a slapdash, patched-together program, but it worked,” said Brent Orrell in TheBulwark.com. Some missteps were inevitable. But the main goal of the program was “keeping people at home and slowing the spread of the disease while preventing a collapse in consumer demand.” It achieved that. The GOP has blocked a program for struggling workers, while big business and finance keep getting help in the form of rock-bottom Federal Reserve rates. That amounts to a handout for the rich combined with “punitive action against the average Joe and Jane.” Just don’t lay all this at the Republicans’ door, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. They voted for a $500 billion stimulus, including $300 a week in enhanced jobless benefits and $105 billion for schools. “You’d think Democrats would grab this money by passing the bill and then go to conference with the House, which has passed a $3.2 trillion bill. Instead, they killed it.”
“You might look at the numbers on the economy and conclude maybe it’s healing quickly enough on its own, and doesn’t need another trillion or two from Congress,” said Rick Newman in Yahoo.com. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. Yes, unemployment is down to 8.4 percent, and it could go below 5 percent if it keeps falling at the same rate. But that’s a very big if. “Thousands of businesses have been hanging on because of federal aid that is now running out.” As government support disappears, many of those will go under, and unemployment will go right back up. And back rent from months of eviction and foreclosure moratoriums is coming due. The epidemic has already exacerbated inequality, said Ben Eisen in The Wall Street Journal. “Those with secure jobs, stuck at home with fewer places to spend money, came out ahead.” But many others “have largely spent the stimulus checks they received in the spring.” Some 11 percent of Americans say they don’t have enough to eat, up from 4 percent just two years ago. With no further aid coming, that dismal number could rise still higher.