'Unemployed Americans Are On 'Precipice of Financial Disaster' If Congress Doesn't Act Now'
Last edited Wed Jul 22, 2020, 06:05 PM - Edit history (1)
'Unemployed Americans are on ‘precipice of financial disaster’ if Congress doesn’t act now: ex-Federal Reserve official.' By Joan McCarter, Daily Kos. July 22, 2020, Alternet.
In just three days, expanded unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to millions of people will end. That’s the $600/week boost that has gone to millions of people thrown out of their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic, the boost that Republicans insist is making a lazy workforce refuse to get back on the job, so they’re trying to get rid of it. But those benefits are doing so much more, Joseph Vavra, a University of Chicago economist who has been studying the impact of the benefits, told The New York Times.
“These unemployment benefit checks are really doing a large job in propping up spending by these unemployed households.” If they are allowed to expire “there’s a good chance that what is now an unemployment problem becomes a foreclosure crisis and eviction crisis.” These UI dollars are circulating throughout the economy, to landlords and grocery stores and hardware stores and all sorts of other retailers, keeping them afloat and their employees on the job. That might have sunk in for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and maybe even some Republicans, as they are now, at the last minute considering a side deal to extend the benefits while they worker out a larger stimulus deal.
That deal, Bloomberg reports, “would extend funds that were provided to millions of Americans by earlier coronavirus rescue packages, according to people familiar with the matter.” However, the scope of that is not clear because there are still Republicans who don’t think the millions of people thrown out of work out of no fault of their own deserve the assistance. There’s also some pushback, which is irritating, from at least one House Democrat. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he doesn’t want the short-term extension because he wants “to give people the security they are not going to be let down and fall through the cracks in September and October.” That’s a good point, so they should start negotiating NOW to extend the benefits this week and tie them to economic conditions moving forward. Do what McConnell always does and use an impending crisis to their advantage. That would remove one contentious issue for the larger package as well.
The urgency is very real. “There are people who are on the precipice of financial disaster here,” David Wilcox, a former Federal Reserve official told the Times. “We may think that the odds are that Congress will come to a reasonable conclusion. But for a person who is on the precipice of financial disaster, it’s very low comfort to be told, ‘You know, I think there’s a 70 percent chance that this is going to work out fine.’” It sure as hell isn’t going to work out by next week. In fact, the latest from Politico’s sources is that there is “0% chance there will be a bill passed by the end of July, 40% chance there is a bill by mid-August.” People can’t wait that long...
More,
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/unemployed-americans-are-on-precipice-of-financial-disaster-if-congress-doesnt-act-now-ex-federal-reserve-official/
- Mitch McConnell Exposes His Distain For Workers As The Economy Faces A Tsunami of Destruction
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/mitch-mcconnell-exposes-his-disdain-for-workers-as-the-economy-faces-a-tsunami-of-destruction/
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