Pass this woefully inadequate deal
The federal aid package taking shape in Congress is too little, too late and, with any luck, too desperately needed to fail. With coronavirus infections accumulating at a furious pace, forcing states and cities to impose closures to stem the tide, California’s jobless claims jumped 13% to more than 200,000 last week, the most since September. The federal government should be unstinting in its determination to treat this pain while newly approved vaccines make their way to Americans over the coming months. Instead, lawmakers have watched the assistance they funded in March and April run out without providing more relief, ensuring that a onceinacentury public health crisis will be accompanied by an economic crisis with few rivals.
Now they’re scrambling to agree on a woefully inadequate second round of economic stimulus in the waning days of the session, and all Americans can do is hope they succeed, at least on the diminished terms by which success is judged on Capitol Hill.
Coming to about $ 900 billion, the spending measures being negotiated are a shadow of those passed some nine months ago and of the subsequent proposals floated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats.
The provisions under discussion as of Thursday would provide payments to individuals and supplemental unemployment benefits at about half the level approved in the spring while funding less than a third of the earlier measure’s aid to businesses.
State and local governments could be left out of the package, forcing them to add to the jobless rolls and reduce services when they’re needed most. That may be the price Democrats pay to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Republicans to drop a demand to protect businesses from liability for sickening employees and customers through reckless practices.
Senate Republicans have tried to leverage the economic stress being inflicted on Americans to free corporations from basic responsibility for the safety of those who work for and patronize them, which would undermine rules that protect essential workers in California and at the federal level.
That’s not the only partisan demand being made on pain of withholding rental and food assistance from Americans fearing eviction and lining up at pantries. GOP senators are also working to limit the Federal Reserve’s power to extend emergency loans to businesses and municipalities. That would advance steps taken by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to hobble the incoming administration’s ability to promote economic confidence and fill the void left by congressional inaction.
Pelosi’s caucus hasn’t been above larding stimulus proposals with their own partisan causes, such as restoring the full federal deduction for state and local taxes. Democrats dropped that demand months ago, however, and they appear to have conceded to a reduction of about twothirds of the spending in their original $ 3 trillion proposal.
The Senate and the Trump administration, meanwhile, have alternated among inaction, nickelanddiming and hostagetaking while the downturn festers. They may get their way by being more willing to force the other side and their fellow Americans to settle for nothing.