Trump Eyes Executive Orders on Coronavirus Relief

By Yuval Rosenberg

With Congress at a Stalemate, Trump Says He’s Considering
Executive Orders on Coronavirus Relief

Negotiators emerged from about two hours of talks Monday on the
next coronavirus relief package calling their discussions
productive but sounding like a deal remains a long way away.

"It was productive. We are moving down the track. We still have
our differences. We are trying to have clearer understanding of
what the needs are," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told
reporters.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer similarly said the two
sides were making some progress, though many differences
remain.

"What we did today, to give you a little flavor of it is we went
through the numbers in the proposal that the Senate put forth and
the proposal that we had," Schumer said. "How many children can you
feed with this amount of dollars for how long? How many schools can
you protect with this amount of dollars so that they can open up
when?"

Pelosi and Schumer told reporters that the parties were sticking
to their divergent positions on the question of renewing a federal
enhancement of unemployment insurance. Democrats have called for a
longer-term extension of a $600 federal boost to weekly
unemployment payments. Republicans have proposed reducing the
supplemental payments to around $200, but have reportedly also
floated shorter-term extensions of the $600 boost.

Pelosi on Monday
told CNN that the $600 level could be tied to
unemployment levels. "If the unemployment goes down, then that
number can go down, but it doesn’t go down -- you know, you’re not
saying to the American people, ‘We have more infections, more
deaths, we have more unemployment, we have more hunger, and now
we’re going to cut your benefit,’" she said.

Politico
reports that Pelosi told fellow House Democrats on
a conference call later Monday that the talks may drag on until
next week. "It is my hope we could do it this week...but probably
not until next week," Pelosi said.

When asked if a comprehensive deal could wind up topping the $1
trillion mark, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the two
sides are "so far apart right now that’s not even a valid
question."

Trump exploring executive orders: With negotiations so
far yielding little progress, President Trump said Monday he’s
looking at taking executive action to stop tenant evictions. "A lot
of people are going to be evicted but I’m going to stop it because
I’ll do it myself if I have to," Trump
told reporters at an event at the White House. "I
have a lot of powers with respect to executive orders and we’re
looking at that very seriously right now."

But The Washington Post
reports it’s not clear what steps Trump could take
to revive an expired moratorium on evictions or a lapsed federal
boost to unemployment insurance. Other executive actions reportedly
could defer the collection of payroll taxes (see more below) or
extend a moratorium on student loan payments.

Conservatives Call for Trump to Suspend
Payroll Tax Collections

In a Sunday
op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore, a
member of the White House’s economic recovery task force, called
for President Trump to "pull an end run" around Congress, declare a
national economic emergency and suspend the collection of payroll
taxes. Trump has repeatedly pushed for a payroll tax cut, but the
idea ran into bipartisan resistance on Capitol Hill and the cut was
not part of the Senate Republican coronavirus relief plan released
last week. Some analysts have said that such a cut would not help
workers who have lost their jobs.

Moore and co-author Phil Kerpen argue that the deferral of
payroll tax collections would leave workers on the hook to pay
those taxes down the line, but that "Trump could also pledge to
sign a bill—now or after the new Congress takes office on Jan. 3—to
forgive those repayments. That would make the election a referendum
on middle-class taxes. Mr. Trump can give Americans a tax cut now,
and sign it into law later." They suggest that Trump could cap the
tax deferral at $75,000 of income to target the benefits to lower-
and middle-income workers.

But tax experts told
Politico that the proposal from Moore and Kerpen,

even if it is legal, might not play out the way
the authors suggest. The Treasury Department may not be able to
mandate that businesses actually pass the deferred tax money on to
employees. "Cautious employers will continue to
withhold payroll taxes from their employees’ paychecks because if
the subsequent tax forgiveness bill does not go through, employers
face potential liability for the full amount of payroll taxes (even
their employees’ portion)," Andy Grewal, a University of Iowa law
professor, told Politico in an email. "What the authors want
requires legislative attention."

Fed Official: Shut Down, Spend Big

The president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank said
Sunday that the U.S. should "lock down really hard" for a few weeks
in order to get control of the coronavirus and create the
conditions for a more robust economic recovery. In the meantime,
Congress should provide all the money that’s necessary to assist
workers and businesses hurt by the shutdown.

Appearing on CBS’s "Face the Nation," Kashkari
said the recent surge in national savings,
combined with historically low interest rates, means that increased
deficit spending can be funded domestically, without relying on
foreign investors. "Those of us who are fortunate enough to still
have our jobs, we’re saving a lot more money because we’re not
going to restaurants or movie theaters or vacations," he said.
"That actually means that we have a lot more resources as a country
to support those who have been laid off."

The price of not doing so will be high, Kashkari warned. "If we
don’t do that and we just have this raging virus spreading
throughout the country with flare-ups and local lockdowns for the
next year or two, which is entirely possible, we’re going to see
many, many more business bankruptcies," he said.

Asked about concerns over rising debt levels, Kashkari
took a different tack than Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who
on Sunday said that "we have to be careful about not piling on
enormous amount of debts for future generations." By contrast,
Kashkari said, "I’m not worried about it. Congress should use this
opportunity to support the American people and the American
economy. If we get the economy growing, we will be able to pay off
the debt."

CEOs Call for More Federal Aid for Small Business

Dozens of corporate leaders led by Starbucks founder Howard
Schultz are pleading with Congress to provide more support for
America’s small businesses.

In a letter
to top lawmakers Monday, Schultz and his co-signers said most small
businesses lack the cash to survive the current slowdown, which
could last for many more months. The group called for a variety of
new programs, including flexible, guaranteed loans; a loan
forgiveness program; and special assistance for minority-owned
businesses.

"We cannot stress enough the urgent need to act," the
letter said. "Every day that passes without a comprehensive
recovery program makes recovery more difficult. By Labor Day, we
foresee a wave of permanent closures if the right steps are not
taken soon. ... By year end, the domino effect of lost jobs—as well
as the lost services and lost products that small businesses
provide—could be catastrophic."

Number of the Day: $192 Million to $419 Million

Via Alan Rappeport of
The New York Times: "According to a
review of
publicly available loan data by the strategy
consulting firm Horizon Advisory, $192 million to $419 million has
gone to more than 125 companies that Chinese entities own or invest
in. Many of the loans were quite sizable; at least 32 Chinese
companies received loans worth more than $1 million, with those
totaling as much as $180 million."

Where Is Trump’s Health Care Plan?

In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace on
July 19, President Trump said that he would be "signing a
health-care plan within two weeks, a full and complete health-care
plan." Two weeks have come and gone and Trump hasn’t released let
alone signed a "full and complete health-care plan," of course.
There’s no indication that the administration has such a
comprehensive plan.

Trump reiterated that a plan was coming in an exchange with
reporters on Friday, The Washington Post
reports: "We’re going to be doing a health-care
plan. We’re going to be doing a very inclusive health-care plan.
I’ll be signing it sometime very soon," he said. When a reporter
noted Trump’s earlier comments that he’d sign a plan in two weeks,
Trump added: "Might be Sunday. But it’s going to be very soon."
On Monday afternoon, he said
the plan will come "hopefully prior to the end of the
month."

Sen. Lindsey Graham told the Post that Trump’s plan would
actually be a "fairly comprehensive" executive order. But as the
Post points out, an executive order, even a broad one, would fall
short of the full and complete plan Trump said is on the way.

As numerous analysts and commentators have noted, Trump’s
failure to produce such a health-care plan continues a pattern of
unfulfilled policy promises. "The truth is, when Trump is stumped,
he likes to throw out promises of big policy initiatives — his
infrastructure push, for instance — that
always seem to be just two weeks away," Washington
Post columnist Karen Tumulty writes. "They are mirages. His
assumption is that people will just forget about them as they choke
on the dust cloud of distraction that he kicks up every day."

"Infrastructure week" may have become a Washington, D.C.,
punchline, but those empty promises may be most noticeable — and
most meaningful to the American public — when it comes to health
care.

"President Trump has repeatedly vowed to repeal the ACA and is
urging the Supreme Court to overturn it. He has never offered a
replacement plan," Larry Levitt, executive vice president for
health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan
nonprofit, said in a tweet Sunday. "His latest budget includes a
vision for reform with few details that would cut federal health
spending by $844 billion over a decade."

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany noted in a
statement to the Post that Trump had issued four executive orders
on drug prices last month and that there will be "more action"
ahead. The president, she said, "continues to act in delivering
better and cheaper health care, protecting Americans with
preexisting conditions, lowering prescription drug costs, and
defending the right of Americans to keep their doctors and plans of
their choice." Trump was expected to sign
another executive order Monday afternoon aimed at
improving health care and telemedicine in rural areas.

But, as the Post’s Anne Gearan, Amy Goldstein and Seung Min Kim
suggest, Trump’s repeated promises of a broader Obamacare
replacement carries some
political risk: "Although it may appeal to voters
who don’t like the ACA, it also highlights his party’s inability to come
up with an alternative, despite spending almost a decade promising
one. It also raises questions about what exactly his plan would
look like and whether it would cover fewer Americans than the
current system as the pandemic ravages the country."

Leaving those questions unanswered may be Trump’s real
health-care plan for now.

Hospitals Lobby for Relief on Pandemic Loans

The Washington Post’s Paige Winfield Cunningham
reports that, starting this week, hospitals will
have to start paying back billions in federal loans they received
to help get them through the early surge of the pandemic, when they
had to cut back other services. "But hospitals say the
repayments, which are to be docked from their regular Medicare
payments until they're fully paid back, could put rural and
low-income-serving facilities underwater —
particularly in areas where the coronavirus continues to
surge," Winfield Cunningham writes.

Hospitals are lobbying to have loan relief included in the
next coronavirus package. "Congress probably won’t entirely forgive
their loans, which span tens of billions of dollars. But there’s a
good chance it will delay when hospitals have to start repaying
them, spread out the repayments over a longer time, reduce the loan
interest rate — or some combination thereof," Winfield Cunningham
says.

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