What's Expected In The Stimulus Package

These are highlights of what's expected to be in the stimulus package as it stands now. For the party that cries wolf, er, socialism anytime a crippled orphan gets a free toy, the Republican initiated bill has become surprisingly generous and a good first step that can be followed up later. After all, this crisis isn't going away overnight. It's liable to last into the fall or winter. Additional measures will be needed in months to come.

Source: Senate coronavirus stimulus package: What’s in it -- Fox News

Checks and Unemployment

The package would provide direct financial help to Americans in the form of stimulus checks sent out to many [not all] Americans. The proposal would include a one-time payment of $1,200 per adult, $2,400 per couple in the U.S. and up to $3,000 for a family of four.

It would establish new and much more generous unemployment benefits by adding $600 per week [I think this was a typo; $60 per week is more realistic] to normal state benefits for up to four months and provides an additional 13 weeks of benefits to 39 weeks of regular unemployment insurance through the end of 2020 if they are sidelined by the outbreak. The coverage would be retroactive to Jan. 27 and coverage would be extended to "gig" workers and independent contractors.

Small Business Support

An estimated $350 billion would be provided for small businesses to keep making payroll. Small businesses employ 50% of American workers. Companies with 500 or fewer employees could tap up to $10 million each in forgivable small business loans to keep paychecks flowing. The program would provide 8 weeks of assistance through federally guaranteed loans qualifying employers who maintain payroll; if they do, other costs like mortgage interest, rent, and utilities would be forgiven.

Funding for Public Health

The bill includes an additional $242 billion in additional emergency appropriations to fight the virus and shore up for safety net programs. That includes money for food stamps, child nutrition, hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and public health and transportation agencies. The figure has gone significantly higher during talks over the weekend.

Big Company Loans

Arguably the most controversial aspect of the proposal, the initial GOP plan called for $208 billion in loans to larger businesses like airlines, which would have to be repaid, and a subsequent version released over the weekend called for $500 billion.

[EdG note] While an initial kneejerk reaction might be "No soup for you!" toward corporations, the intent is to help out the airlines, amusement parks, cruise lines, and tourist destinations that provide millions of jobs and have been devastated by the various shutdowns.

Share
up
11 users have voted.

Comments

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

to Stevie Munchkin and his merry band of corporate Lollipop Guild thieves lobbyists should make McConnel's proposal a non-starter for anybody remotely concerned about taxpayer bailouts of these corrupt and mismanaged enterprises.

Why doesn't it concern you?

up
16 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

dervish's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger Let's say you give $50B to Delta airlines, just as an example, Delta's geniuses realize that running an airline isn't the most profitable thing they can do right now, and doing so won't make the most money for their shareholders.

So Delta fires everyone except a handful of the top suits and a few bean counters. They take the 50B, and essentially become Delta Hedgefund instead of Delta Airlines, and invest it in Far Eastern equities and various futures and derivatives, mostly betting against our success and in favor of the success of those who've handled this crisis better than we have (ie Japan, China, S.Korea, Germany and Russia).

With the Fed Funds rate at 0%, expect a lot of the above shenanigans, which would do absolutely nothing to help our economy, but which would certainly benefit the individual portfolios of our oligarchs.

On a related note, check out this rather predictable article.

up
13 users have voted.

"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@dervish

Then they hit P.C. Richard & Son in Southampton to rush-order extra freezers to hoard all that food — 700 orders last weekend alone. When one customer was asked what size freezer she wanted, she said, “I don’t care. It just needs to be big enough that I can hide in it.”

Definitely a Biden voter.

up
9 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

snoopydawg's picture

@dervish

The woman was told to stay in Manhattan.

Instead, she allegedly got on public transportation, telling no one of her condition. Then she showed up at Southampton Hospital, demanding admittance.

“Someone else took a private jet to East Hampton and did not tell anybody ’til he landed,” the resident says. “That’s the most horrendous aspect. The virus is already here, and we don’t have any medical resources.”

“We’re at the end of Long Island, the tip, and waves of people are bringing this s–t,” says lifelong Montauker James Katsipis. “We should blow up the bridges. Don’t let them in.”

The lady should have stayed in the big city because she'd have a better chance of surviving than in a smaller hospital that don't have supplies. Plus if things go south the rich won't have the national guard to protect them. Yup. Oops.

Social Darwinism has been trending on Twitter for a good reason.

And after the rich panic-fleers bought all the available food, they did not hunker down at home. Instead, they went out partying.

up
11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Hawkfish's picture

@snoopydawg

The Hamptons are not a defensible position.

up
0 users have voted.

We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

I don't know if this is a "kneejerk reaction", but here's my modest proposal: The federal government could offer Delta Airlines a simple deal: "Your market cap as of 5pm today is 14 billion dollars. We're buying the whole company at that price." And then the federal government could have Delta Airlines issue 12 billion dollars worth of bonds in order to fund its operations, 100% of which would be purchased by the federal government. 12 billion dollars would be enough to fund Delta's operations for one year even if they maintained their normal service and charged nothing for it. Both deals would be done without the assistance -- and accompanying vigorish -- of investment bankers.

Until the resumption of "normal business", the money raised with the bonds would go to servicing other debt instruments, paying salaries and wages, and maintaining physical plant. Upon the resumption of "normal business", remaining funds from the bond issue would go to subsidizing operations until the economy was more or less back in full swing.

And then on April 1st, 2021, the Feds would begin selling Delta shares back into the market at a nice, slow pace -- maybe release 2% per week -- until the entire company was back on the public exchange. I guarantee that the Feds would recoup all 26 billion (particularly given that maybe a quarter of all the money they spend in wages and salaries would be coming right back as either FICA or income tax), and in the meantime thousands of employees would have been able to make ends meet through this economic meltdown.

If we're going to spend 500 billion dollars, we should damn well get something for our money -- something more than that we all get to go back to work for the same billionaires when this is all over. Their system failed. They should lose their shirts.

up
15 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd
the combined market cap of Southwest, Delta, United and American is, at this moment, less than 50 billion dollars.

up
10 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

edg's picture

@UntimelyRippd

That's why it'll never pass. Joe Biden and Republicans will say IT'S SOCIALISM!!!!

Loans aren't such a bad thing, though. GM and Chrysler loans turned out okay after the 2008 Bush Financial Crash. Personally, I'd rather see a few hundred billion bucks in loans to companies that actually make stuff or provide tangible services instead of the forty-nine trillion that was handed to banks and Wall Street after the crash or the one trillion a day the Fed is currently dishing out to prop up stock prices.

up
4 users have voted.
Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@UntimelyRippd

we'd squeeze the shareholders for pennies on the dollar, buy out all the airlines, and monopolize the entire market.

But I guess in the US only businessmen are allowed to be that ruthless.

up
11 users have voted.

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger
investment bankers, and then they will be the ones scarfing up all that bargain-basement corporate equity. Because that's how we roll in the You Ess of Ay.

up
6 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Every man woman and child in America. A family of four getting 10 grand would fix the economy instantly.

up
9 users have voted.
dervish's picture

@Battle of Blair Mountain

up
3 users have voted.

"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Centaurea's picture

N/T

up
0 users have voted.

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

WoodsDweller's picture

The idea seems to be "how do we get back to normal ASAP?", or "loans will be paid back once we're back to normal."
Normal is over. For good.
Bail out cruise lines? Why? I tood a cruise once, we had fun. But the ship is a death trap if anything goes wrong, like this virus or Legionaire's Disease. It's one of those businesses that should just go under and not be replaced.
Bail out airlines? Why? We need to convert to regional high speed rail and minimize international travel anyway. Minimize international trade while we're at it.
El Trumpo wants this go go away next week. It isn't going to. We're going to be shut in for 3 months, or much longer. It will be 18 months until vaccines are available in mass quantities.
There are climate impacts to this outbreak. We don't yet know just how bad they'll be but I expect them to be life changing.
What we need to do for business is absolutely goddamned nothing. What we need to do for the banks is nationalize them. What we need to do for hotels/golf courses/cruise lines is let them die a natural death in an economy where there's no demand for them.
What about the affected workers? UBI. Their jobs are gone for good. They will likely not be replaced, either with similar work or any work at all.

up
9 users have voted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

edg's picture

@WoodsDweller

You want to do nothing for business and put 50 million people out of work. Wow.

up
0 users have voted.
WoodsDweller's picture

@edg @edg
That economy is over for good. Burning hundreds of billions trying to prop it up won't change that. We'll either develop a sustainable economy or we'll have no economy. We'll either figure out how to sustain a few hundred million people on Earth or zero. And we've maybe got a decade to do it.

EDIT:

Let me expand on this. The IPCC interim report tells us we have to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, preferably by 70%, from 2018 levels. In the short term (and a decade is a the short term) the world's GDP is tightly coupled to fossil fuel consumption. Reducing emissions means reducing GDP. In the long term we can hope to transition to an economy which does not rely on fossil fuel consumption -- that's what something like the Green New Deal is trying to accomplish -- so that we can still have some sort of economy. But first we have to get through the short term.
The absolute best case is a grinding depression where whole industries are wiped out overnight. Nothing else is enough to get the job done completely enough fast enough.
We need to get aid to people -- food, shelter, utilities, medical care. We need enough of an economy to get that done. We need to push ahead to develop the technologies that promise some sort of future. Some of that may require some government intervention.
This is the time to rise to the challenge of rapid, radical, revolutionary change or dig our graves and lay down in them and wait to die. Let the dinosaur industries drop dead ASAP.

up
9 users have voted.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

Centaurea's picture

@WoodsDweller
that the human race is at "evolve or die" time, as Caitlin Johnstone puts it.

For several months now I've gotten the feeling that the human race on the level of its collective consciousness has decided to survive. That being the case, major changes are going to take place rapidly in a short period of time. There is no alternative.

As you say, and contrary to the hopes and wishes of the fearful establishment Biden supporters, there is no going back to "normalcy".

We still have our part to play, but the changes we've set in motion by the collective decision to survive are happening now. This pandemic is part of that process.

Still a challenging, uncertain, scary time, but seeing it from the above perspective helps me get grounded and calm(er).

This is the time to rise to the challenge of rapid, radical, revolutionary change or dig our graves and lay down in them and wait to die. 

up
6 users have voted.

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

snoopydawg's picture

@Centaurea

SSI is not taxable, but it's not really an amount that many can live on. But since I am a nonproductive person of society Nancy and her friends don't think I should get any help surviving this. Prices are going up on groceries and it's kinda hard to shelter in place and lay in weeks of supplies when you don't have the $ to buy them. Plus our store has placed limits on the food I eat to 2 a day so I am going to the store every 3 days which ups the chance of being infected. SHelter in place is great. If you can afford to.

up
3 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@edg
much better than doing everything for business and putting 50 million people out of work.

up
2 users have voted.
Centaurea's picture

to every American. Just "many" Americans. Poorer families would apparently get smaller stimulus checks, based on their income shown on their 2018 income tax return. If they didn't file a return for 2018 for a valid reason, such as not working in 2018, too bad. Makes sense, right? [/s]

And it would be a slow, clunky, bureaucrat mess to administer.

Why do they insist on being such tight-wad out-of-control control freaks at such a critical time?

(Rhetorical question. We know why. They're sick, and it ain't from coronavirus.)

stimulus checks sent out to many Americans

(Emphasis supplied)

up
5 users have voted.

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone