Pelosi Rips Republicans as Virus Talks Take a Bitter Turn

By Yuval Rosenberg

Pelosi Rips Republicans as Virus Talks
Take Bitter Turn

Maybe this will turn out to be one of those "darkest
before the dawn" moments, but as Trump administration officials and
Democratic leaders working on the next coronavirus relief package
entered what was expected to be a lengthy negotiating session
Thursday afternoon, the prospects of a deal looked dim at
best.

Democratic leaders and the Trump administration remain
trillions of dollars apart in their proposals for the relief
package, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told reporters
Wednesday, and the tone of the negotiators turned sharply more
acrimonious on Thursday.

Asked during a morning appearance on CNBC why she couldn’t
reach across the aisle to "give a huge chunk of money
to the people who are disenfranchised, to the minorities who want
so badly to stay in business and can't," Pelosi tore into
Republicans: "Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a
damn, for what you just described. That's the problem," she said.
"See the thing is, they don't believe in governance. And that
requires some acts of governance to do that."

Pelosi had suggested Wednesday that there’s "light at the
end of the tunnel" but the length of the tunnel remained to be
seen, but she put a more ominous spin on that metaphor in a
Thursday press briefing with reporters. "The light at the end of
the tunnel may be the freight train of the virus coming at us if we
do not contain it," she said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blamed
Democrats for blocking a short-term extension last week of the
federal unemployment benefits but told CNBC that he thinks a deal
will happen. "There is a desire on the part of both the Democrats
and the Republicans — at least most of the Republicans, not every
single one — that we get to an outcome because the economy does
need an additional boost until we get the vaccine," McConnell said.
"Exactly when that deal comes together I couldn’t tell you, but I
think it will at some point in the near future."

Pelosi takes a hard line: The speaker hasn’t budged
off her insistence that she’s not interested in a short-term deal
and that enhanced unemployment benefits of $600 a week should be
renewed. Pelosi "remains almost entirely unyielding in her
demands," Politico says, and Democrats have been unified in their
position. "Why dismantle a program that almost all economists say
is working and put something new in its place that will take months
to go into effect?" Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer

asked Thursday.

Trump again threatens to use executive orders:
President Trump sure didn’t sound like he was expecting a
deal to be reached. He said Thursday he was preparing to sign
executive orders as soon as Friday aimed at addressing his
priorities for coronavirus relief. "Upon departing the Oval Office
for Ohio, I’ve notified my staff to continue working on an
Executive Order with respect to Payroll Tax Cut, Eviction
Protections, Unemployment Extensions, and Student Loan Repayment
Options," he
tweeted.

The threat of executive action was seen as the
administration’s attempt to exert some leverage to get Democrats to
move toward an agreement, and there are questions about whether the
executive orders (aside from one on the eviction moratorium) would
be legal.

But in a sign that Trump might really move ahead with the
orders, The Washington Post
reports that the administration asked
federal agencies to identify all unspent money from the $2 trillion
Cares Act passed in March and that the White House was trying to
determine whether that money could be redirected toward temporary
unemployment benefits or the eviction moratorium.

Pelosi on CNBC encouraged Trump to extend the eviction
moratorium but added that legislative action to provide money for
rental and housing assistance was still needed since a moratorium
would be of limited use if people ultimately still can’t pay their
bills. Others also remain concerned that executive orders would be
too limited in scope to deliver the aid the economy
needs.

What’s next: The negotiators were meeting at 5 p.m.
ET. But senators are
headed home and Politico
notes that many don’t expect to be back in
the Capitol next week. The House, meanwhile, is out next
week. "Both can be called back," Politico
reports, "but when you send ’em home, it’s usually because action
is far off."

A reminder of what’s at stake: Enhanced
unemployment benefits for millions of Americans expired last week,
and a moratorium on evictions also ended last month. The Paycheck
Protection Program of small-business loans is set to expire on
Saturday. Meanwhile, first-time claims of unemployment benefits
have topped 1 million for 20 straight weeks (see more below). Many
economists now expect the economy to suffer as households pull back
on spending.

"Talks between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White
House chief of staff Mark Meadows and the two Democratic leaders
have turned into a giant game of chicken even as millions of
Americans face growing financial hardships and the U.S. economy
continues to stumble along," Politico reported Wednesday
evening.

Right now, it looks like there are no winners in this
game.

Jobless Claims Fall to Lowest Level Since March

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell to about 1.2
million on a seasonally adjusted basis in the week ending August 1,
the lowest weekly tally since mid-March. An additional 656,000
people applied to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program,
which provides benefits for self-employed and gig workers, bringing
the total of new jobless applications to roughly 1.8 million.

The data came in below analyst expectations of 1.4 million new
state claims, offering some relief from the increases in filings
over the last two weeks.

The numbers are still bad: Even these improved numbers
are alarmingly high by historical standards. New jobless claims
topped 1 million for the 20th week in a row, with each week
crushing the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 claims set in 1982. And
the number of people receiving assistance is extraordinarily high,
with more than 32 million getting some kind of unemployment
aid.

"It is promising that the initial unemployment numbers have
ticked down," AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring
Lab,
told The Washington Post. "But we aren’t out of
the woods yet. The claims are still much higher than the pre-covid
era, so it’s still pointing to a lot of economic pain."

Continued improvement is not guaranteed:
Some economists worry that the recovery is running into
headwinds, with a significant number of job losses becoming
permanent, even as the data becomes harder to read as federal
relief programs expire.

"Both initial and continuing claims are at extremely high
levels, and indicate that many employers continued to lay off
workers in July," PNC economist Bill Adams said in a note Thursday.
"Further complicating the picture, the expiration of extended
unemployment insurance benefits on July 31 may be clouding the
signal from the claims data."

Trump Orders ‘Buy American’ for Essential Drugs

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday that directs
the federal government to purchase "essential drugs" and medical
supplies from American manufacturers.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said the order reflected
a desire to gain national control over essential medical goods,
adding that the pandemic showed the United States was "dangerously
overdependent" on other countries for drugs and medical
supplies.

The order could produce a serious shakeup in the drug industry,
according to STAT’s Nicholas Florko. "No one knows exactly how much
of the American drug supply chain is produced abroad, but some
experts insist up to 90% of critical generic drugs are made at
least partially abroad," Florko
said.

But there is still much that is unknown about how the order will
play out. The White House is not defining the specific drugs that
must be made in the U.S., leaving that for the Food and Drug
Administration to determine later. And, as Politico’s David Lim

wrote, the order "appears to allow for broad
exemptions based on cost, availability and ‘public interest.’"

The drug industry and some business groups oppose the
approach, warning earlier this year that "buy American" means
higher prices for U.S. consumers. But the order includes some
provisions that would benefit the pharmaceutical industry,
including streamlining the drug approval process and an easing of
environmental regulations that affect drug
manufacturing.

NYT: Two Big Reasons the United States Has
Failed to Control the Coronavirus

David Leonhardt of The New York Times set out to find out why
the United States stands alone as "the only affluent nation to have
suffered a severe, sustained outbreak
for more than four months." Interviews with
scientists and public health experts pointed to two main
factors:

"First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in
confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of
the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism
over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the
United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has
long produced worse medical outcomes — including
higher infant mortality and diabetes
rates and lower
life expectancy — than in most other rich countries.
…

"The second major theme is one that public health experts
often find uncomfortable to discuss because many try to steer clear
of partisan politics. But many agree that the poor results in the
United States stem in substantial measure from
the performance of the Trump administration.
"In no other high-income country — and in only a few
countries, period — have political leaders departed from expert
advice as frequently and significantly as the Trump
administration."


Read "The Unique U.S. Failure to Control the Virus" at The
New York Times.

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