The Unemployment Emergency Ahead

By Yuval Rosenberg

Trump Admin May Be Open to Extending
Emergency Unemployment Aid, but Time Running Out

With the $600-a-week federal boost to unemployment benefits set
to expire later this month, potentially leaving millions of
Americans facing a financial crunch, some senior Trump
administration officials have begun signaling that they’d go along
with a modified extension of the payments.

The Washington Post reports:

"One potential compromise discussed by Republican lawmakers
would involve cutting the unemployment benefit from $600 per week
to between $200 and $400 per week and making up at least part of
the difference by sending another round of $1,200 stimulus
payments."

White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Post that the
administration opposes continuing the current $600 weekly increase
and argued, as administration officials have for months, that the
extra benefit gives workers no incentive to return to their jobs.
But he did not rule out a more limited extension. Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin
said last week that any extension of enhanced
benefits would ensure that unemployed workers get "no more than
100%" of what they would have earned at their job.

Time is running short: The Senate is set to return from
recess on July 20, just five days before the enhanced benefit will
expire in every state but New York, where it will end a day later.
But the GOP has yet to reach consensus on the issue, and the Post
says serious bipartisan talks haven’t begun.

Republicans are reportedly crafting a coronavirus relief package
with the White House that is expected to cost about $1 trillion, or
about a third the size of the HEROES Act legislation passed by the
House in May, which would extend the $600 weekly unemployment
payments for six months. Republicans dismissed the Democratic
legislation as an expensive liberal wish list. The GOP package,
which reportedly would include financial incentives for schools to
reopen, is expected to be unveiled as soon as next week.

Doubts about a deal: That leaves little time — and lots
of issues to be resolved — before the House is set to leave for its
August recess. "They don’t have time, which is what is very scary
about all this," Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the
Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican staff director for
the Senate Budget Committee, told the Post. "It’s very
irresponsible."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
told CNN Tuesday that she’s willing to put off or
cancel the scheduled August recess in order to reach a deal on the
next coronavirus relief package, including unemployment
benefits.

In the meantime, millions of Americans would face serious
financial hardship once the benefit expires. More than 30 million
Americans would see an income cut of between 50% and 75% if the
benefits go away, economist Ernie Tedeschi, who worked in the
Treasury Department during the Obama administration, projects.

"We’d basically have to choose between paying bills and eating,"
one woman who was furloughed from her job at the end of April told
the Post. "I honestly don’t know what I would do."


Read more at The Washington Post.

Biden Outlines $2 Trillion Green Energy Plan

Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a plan to spend $2 trillion
over four years on green energy, transportation and
infrastructure.

The plan is part of a sweeping proposal to address climate
change while also boosting an economy still reeling from the
coronavirus recession.

"When I think about climate change, the word I think of is
‘jobs,’" Biden said in a speech delivered in Wilmington,
Delaware.

More money, faster: Earlier in the
campaign, Biden offered a $1.7 trillion climate plan spread out
over 10 years. But in a sign of Biden’s leftward shift, and growing
concerns about the need to spur economic growth, the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee has increased his proposed spending
while accelerating the timetable.

A boost for electric cars: Among the
many proposals is a plan to subsidize consumers who trade in
gas-powered cars for American-made electric vehicles.

Carbon-free power in 15 years: Biden
calls for the elimination of carbon pollution from the power sector
by 2035, and a 100% "clean energy economy" by 2050.

For more details, see Biden’s campaign
website and reports in
The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal.

Quote of the Day

"This is not a normal recession. The recessionary part
of this you’re going to see down the road. You will see the effect
of this recession. You’re just not going to see it right away
because of all the stimulus."

– JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer
Jamie Dimon

More Than 5 Million Have Lost Health Insurance Due to
Coronavirus: Study

About 5.4 million workers who lost their jobs between
February and May are now uninsured, according a
new analysis from Families USA, a nonpartisan
consumer health advocacy organization.

The increase in the number of uninsured surpasses the
annual record set during the recession in 2008, when 3.9 million
workers lost their health insurance, the group said Tuesday. Nearly
half of the losses (46%) came in just five states: California,
Texas, Florida, New York and North Carolina.

No definitive numbers yet: The
Families USA analysis provides an estimate based on current data,
and we won’t have official numbers until next year, when the
federal government publishes its own analysis of insurance coverage
for 2020. Other groups have provided estimates, as well. The Kaiser
Family Foundation says that about 27 million people have lost
health insurance coverage, a considerably larger number that
includes family members of the formerly insured. And the Urban
Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a study
that estimates that about 10.1 million people will lose
employer-provided coverage by the end of the year due to the
coronavirus.

More than one in seven now lack insurance:
About 16% of Americans are now uninsured, Families USA
estimates, and many of the states experiencing spikes in the
coronavirus have higher levels of uninsured residents. In Texas,
29% of adults under the age of 65 are uninsured, while in Florida
the number is 25%.

Why it matters: The loss of health
insurance is by definition bad news, but it’s even more so in the
middle of a national health crisis. "This is particularly
problematic during a pandemic involving a highly infectious, deadly
disease, especially in states that are allowing residents to be in
closer personal contact by attempting to reopen their economies –
often the same states that are now experiencing significant spikes
in COVID-19 infection rates," the group said.

Top Candidate to Lead Coronavirus Oversight Panel Withdraws:
Report

Nearly four months after Congress created a five-member
commission to oversee implementation of a $500 billion coronavirus
relief fund, the panel remains without a chairperson. Retired Gen.
Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has
withdrawn from consideration for the position,
Politico reports. The CARES Act passed in March
required House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell to agree on a chair. Dunford had been the leading
candidate.

Chart of the Day: Trump’s Massive Farm Bailouts

Direct aid to farmers has jumped under President Trump,
from $11.5 billion in 2017 to an all-time high of $32 billion and
counting this year, as the administration seeks to ease the pain of
its tariff wars and the coronavirus pandemic. "But as agriculture
grows more reliant on unprecedented taxpayer support, farm policy
experts and watchdog groups warn the subsidies are growing too big
and too fast, with no strings attached and little oversight from
Congress — and that Washington could have a difficult time shutting
off the spigot," Politico agriculture reporter Ryan McCrimmon

writes.

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