Do your think that your $1000 check is a big deal? Consider this:
Assuming that there are 130 million households, and each household gets $1000, that would amount to $130 billion. Yet the “stimulus” is $2 trillion, so that leaves a lot unaccounted for. Let’s assume that the bill contains $.02 trillion in funds for medical supplies along with $0.13 trillion in checks for households. That leaves $1.85 trillion for special interests.
I know that it’s too late to do anything about it. I should just shut up and move on. But I’m in a bitter mood today. Sorry.
UPDATE. It looks closer to $3000 per household. In that case, call it $0.4 trillion for households and $1.58 trillion for special interests.
Note that it is 1200 for an individual, 2400 for filing jointly, and 500 for each qualifying child. So you might be off by half.
According to the WSJ the bill that was agreed to is still being written this morning.
Interesting to look at your figure about 130 million American households.
The US spends about $1.3 trillion every year on Department of Defense, VA, black budget, DHS, and prorated debt on national security.
So this year we will tax away about $10,000 from every household for the above-mentioned functions, and then give back $2000 or $3000 in stimulus.
It is worse.
The new carriers cannot survive a drone war, nor can the F22s and F35s. Most of that military hardware is being written off, some 4 trillion since Reagan is now a waste heap of metal junk. Instead we are building 20,000 dollar flying bots to replace the useless hardware. Millennials will not spend a lifetime paying interest on John McCain’s erroneous military budget. McCain is dead, and boomers who hide this disgrace are dying off.
Don’t you wish you had been more in favor of checks to individuals? Maybe then all the money would have gone there instead of special interests.
How easy a message would this have been. A lot easier sell to the public to be sure.
So if Arnold had more strongly supported a policy, it probably would have been adopted? Does he realize he has that much influence?
If we are to say our opinions don’t matter, why even blog.
My point is simply this. I think the idea that we were going to get mass layoffs, 30% unemployment, collapsing stock market, and people at the bottom living paycheck to paycheck suddenly being locked in place without any kind of support was pretty laughable. Of course there was going to be “a bailout”, and quite frankly there should if you are going to force people out of a job when they need one to survive.
Now, that bailout could either have been a single page that read something like:
1) $X per month per adult through Dec 31st 2020
2) $Y per month per child through Dec 31st 2020
3) $X & $Y taxable in 2021 based on 2020 income levels.
4) Federal government will provide funds for any increase in state unemployment spending in 2020 that exceeds 2019 levels.
Boom, done, one page.
If the airlines or anyone else want to lobby for a bailout bill they can do so without holding up checks people need to make ends meet in the short run.
Separating what is an obvious need people have to be compensated for being thrown out of work in the lockdown ought to have been separated from 600 page lobbyist grab bags, but instead we got a bunch of griping out “whose paying for that $1000 check”. Isn’t it obvious. Our future selves who are allowed to go back to work. They have jobs. They aren’t in a crisis. They don’t need it as bad.
We cannot have a federal budget without the primary dealers financially healthy, mainly because the senators cannot manage the federal cash flow.
This is not a stimulus.
This is the bailout of the 2008 bailout. It is about our backlog of debt costing 2.5% while tax revenue is plunging 10%.
It includes more than $300 billion for small businesses, $150 billion for local and state governments and $130 billion for hospitals, according to those involved in the negotiations.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-24/congress-white-house-stimulus-deal-coronavirus
Handing out money to state and local governments seems slightly less bad than some other alternatives, given that state tax revenues are likely to fall and the demand for state level services are likely to rise. I guess hospitals are pretty worthy recipients under the circumstances, too, although I question how anybody determined that $130 billion was the correct amount. I feel less good about handing out $300 billion in public money to small businesses. On what basis?
You are feeling bitter? How do you think Sarah Palin feels? “Drill, baby, drill” is the single best, wisest, and most efficacious policy prescription in USA history and the caronavirus toll would be much worse without all the ensuing energy production: a cold house is an unsafe house.
…blink…blink…
A lot of the reporting on this is getting it wrong, or making people confused.
The bill that already passed and became law was H.R.6201, the “Families First Coronavirus Response Act”, which does not have any provisions for individual payments.
The bill with the payments, which are called “recovery rebates” is S.3548, the “Coronavirus Air, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act”.
That bill is still in the Senate Finance Committee, being renegotiated, and taking on amendments. Right now there are three amendments, one of seems merely opportunistic, about allergy tests.
The other two are:
Perdue: Suspend the federal payroll tax for 2020 – that could be big.
Hawley: $1200 indiv, $2400 joint, phased out at 5% of income above caps, and $500 per kid.
https://twitter.com/ReaganBattalion/status/1242141596541427713 << retweeted by Trump.
I'd much rather more go towards individuals. But it's a huge, Big Gov't, slush fund.
Trump willing to spend tons of OPM/ gov't money to get some things done.
Really too bad it wasn't set up as loans. With 0% interest until end of emergency; low interest first year, and rising interest after that. Available to all, immediately; voluntary, but those who get it must pay it back. It would be bett
A big Tax Holiday would be a good alternative — All allowed a tax credit of $10k.
Too bad anti-gov't Libbers failed to have an "off-the-shelf" plan for pandemic mitigation and recovery.
Re: $$ for small business.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I had understood that (by way of extreme example) all the demand-side gov’t-aided support in the world would be of little use if there were zilch produced on the supply side.
I hated the Bush-Obama larded-up support programs, and I’d rather not see a national rescue-us-from-the-virus bill at all, but so long as our federal, state, and local governments are imposing draconian restrictions on who may carry on his normal [small] business, then I’d ask for more specific identification of the “special interests” painted so broadly.
If the owner of, say, a local house painting business with one or two employees cannot pursue his occupation, by law, or the owner of a nat. gas fireplace business with 20 employees cannot open his business doors, by law, then does not that law-imposing government incur some responsibility toward them? The multi-nationals and other “big” business likely have backup resources to tap (although I’ve read that many have already tapped out lines of credit.) However, there are uncountable businesses of varying lesser size across the nation that cannot be carried on by “working from home,” and which now by law cannot be carried on at all.
Consider that these businesses, by way of limited examples only:
1) have rent and utilities and taxes to pay. Sooner or later, any surplus funds they’ve held available for those purposes will be exhausted. Further, at some point the collective reductions in revenue to landlords (who are also borrowers, and to their other obligees will flow “upstream” and cause repeated financial starvation & chained collapse. Taxing authorities and utilities will find themselves pinched as well & could they then go to their now unemployed erstwhile taxpayers for funds?
2) likely may have an outstanding business loan on which they must pay, and what lender is going to forebear payments by or offer a bridge loan to a business for which there is no re-opening, resumption of business, time frame? Indeed, banking regulations severely penalize such improvident lending (although some relief/flexibility has been requested.) Should not there be provision for some gov’t guarantee to bolster a close-to-open transition period of financing?
3) all those employees deprived of gainful work by government fiat will be filing for unemployment. Is their state unemployment funding adequate for such a doubling or tripling in filings? How should such a deficit be resolved?
I have no doubt that there are provisions in the bill with which one might find fault or view with skepticism, but given the present unique circumstances of government-mandated closure of businesses that are otherwise quite viable, are there not useful, and indeed warranted measures that should/must be allowed for the continued commercial health of our economy?
Politicians being what they are, sure, we will probably find funds going to studies of the mating habits of crabs or the like, but that’s politics, which should be criticized separately and apart from what we should do to preserve long-term economic health.
Hey, if I’m being stupid here, feel free to tell me that. My ego is not so fragile that it cannot stand criticism, and indeed, I welcome enlightenment as to where I’m in error.
It does seem reasonable that businesses closed by law should be compensated. But the majority of small businesses closed by law have been closed by state authorities. And the closures are not uniform across states. Do we have any assurance that the funds allocated to small businesses and states will actually be apportioned to the businesses most affected (or closed by law)? Not really, and if anything, past evidence on federal spending would indicate otherwise.
Sure, this is a crisis situation. Why not smack it with payments on both the demand and supply side? It’s pretty easy to give payments on the demand side. But do we have a good starting point for payments on the supply side? In the end, that will come out as payments to special interests as Arnold mentioned.
Thanks for your reply!
“In the end, that will come out as payments to special interests as Arnold mentioned.”
A thought I had was that one person’s “special interests” may be my employer, insurer, customer, or supplier. Eye of the beholder ‘n all that. …just a random thought.
It seems to me that for payments we’re apparently limited to and subject to guidance formulated by institutions that are presently in place, such as the SBA, state unemployment agencies, FDIC/OCC/DOL/, etc. All government programs are inefficient and subject to vast waste, fraud & abuse, and yet…, there they are.
Rhetorical question: does the prospect that some, some, payment may go to particular recipients or industries that one believes undeserving suggest that a supply-side rescue plan should not be undertaken at all?
In passing, I am struck by analogy to criticism by some of UBI, which is [I believe] favored by our host: that some may mis-spend [or be deemed undeserving] should not determine that it should not be done at all. I have not given that thought any deep consideration, though.
I’m not sure exactly what you were expecting?
I was expecting a political friends and family type event. That looks like exactly what we will get. And, of course there will be broad bipartisan support for it…who doesn’t love to spend other people’s money.
Isn’t a very large component of the rest of the spend in this bill on supplementary unemployment insurance?