Forget About a Stimulus Deal (for Now)

By Yuval Rosenberg

Senate Democrats Block GOP’s Scaled-Back Coronavirus Relief
Bill

Senate Republicans on Thursday failed to advance their
scaled-back coronavirus relief package, as Democrats blocked the
roughly
$650 billion plan, which they called woefully
inadequate. House Democrats in May passed a $3 trillion package and
Democratic leaders have pressed for a $2.2 trillion compromise
deal.

Thursday’s Senate vote — 52-47, shy of the 60 votes needed — was
almost entirely along party lines, underscoring just how dug in
both sides remain after months of deadlock on additional
legislation to address the pandemic and its economic toll.

The result was as expected, as the only question heading into
the vote was whether Republicans would be able to round up enough
votes in their own caucus to make a display of GOP unity that could
potentially strengthen their hand in any future negotiations — and,
as they prepare for peak campaign season, better enable them to
blame Democrats for not delivering more aid to suffering
Americans.

They did. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to
vote against the plan (citing an unwillingness to add to the
national debt). No Democrats voted for it.

We’ll spare you the details of the partisan sniping that came
before and after the vote.

What it all means: You can probably forget about another
coronavirus relief package before the November elections. No new
talks are currently scheduled and it may take some new pressure
point for that to change. In the meantime, each side is
looking to stick together and waiting for the other
party to crack.

"If past is prologue, there's actually a significant chance that
the public heat on many Republican senators as they go back home
will have them come to their senses, and they'll start negotiating
with us in a serious way," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

said ahead of the vote.

A number of Republican senators indicated Thursday that they
weren’t optimistic about the chances of a deal before November.
"Congress is not going to pass another COVID relief bill before the
election," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said
on Twitter.

Sen. Chuck Grassley put the onus on Democrats and House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi to break the stalemate. "It looks like they don't want
to get to an agreement," he said, according to
The Hill. "So my guess is, as of now, unless
Pelosi changes her mind and talks to the White House, there's not
gonna be anything done."

Asked what happens next, McConnell
reportedly offered a similar view: "Well,
hopefully Democrats will come back to the table."

Labor Market Still Struggling

More than 857,000 workers filed initial jobless claims at the
state level last week, the Labor Department
announced Thursday, and another 839,000 filed
first-time claims in the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
program.

State filings have been under 1 million for two weeks in a row,
but the combined state and federal number is still well above that
level and has been rising for four weeks straight. All told, about
30 million people were receiving unemployment benefits in the week
ending August 22.

"The unexpectedly high levels of claims underscore the uneven
nature of the labor market’s recovery," Bloomberg’s Reade Pickert

said Thursday. "Many businesses are hiring or
bringing back workers, yet millions remain unemployed and others
are on the chopping block as more companies announce job cuts and
small-business aid runs dry."

Some economists are raising alarms about the wobbly recovery.
"It’s a gut punch to see these numbers every Thursday with no
improvement," Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm
Grant Thornton,
told The New York Times. "The numbers are going in
the wrong direction."

Bloomberg economist Eliza Winger said that the "labor market
recovery appears to be flattening well shy of the pre-pandemic
peak."

Improvements but plenty of pain, too. Job losses are on a
long and bumpy downward trend but remain at alarmingly high levels.
Good news arrived last week when the Labor Department announced
that the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.4% in August. But as
with much during the coronavirus crisis, there’s a substantial
footnote: About 1.1 million furloughed workers are being counted as
employed, and roughly 3.7 million people have left the workforce
since March. Factoring in those details, some economists
say a more realistic unemployment rate would be
closer to 10%.

Trump’s unemployment aid running out. The $300 per week
in unemployment assistance President Trump made available from
disaster relief funds is starting to run out, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency announced Thursday that payments would
be restricted to a maximum of six weeks. Officials in several
states, including Montana, Texas, Tennessee and New Mexico, said
they have been told that funding for their programs would end in
the week ending September 5, five weeks after the program’s
retroactive start date of August 1.

At least 20 states have received funds so far through the
Lost Wages Assistance program that Trump authorized by executive
action on August 8, though more have applied and are awaiting
payment. About $30 billion has been paid out from the $44 billion
fund, according to
Politico.

Number of the Day: $175 Million

The Justice Department said Thursday that it has so far
charged 57 people with trying to steal more than $175 million from
the Paycheck Protection Program meant to aid small businesses
weather the coronavirus pandemic. Officials said that they have
identified 500 individuals who may have defrauded the $660 billion
program and that coordinated criminal rings engaged in systematic
efforts to "loot" the program. They also said that the government
had been able to recover or freeze more than $30 million and expect
to add to that total, but that actual losses to the federal
government total more than $70 million.

Medicaid Work Requirements in Arkansas Didn’t Boost Employment:
Study

A
new study of work requirements for Medicaid
recipients in Arkansas finds that they did nothing to increase
employment but did impose substantial hardships on those who lost
coverage as a result of the requirements.

The background: Arkansas was the first state to impose
work requirements on some Medicaid beneficiaries, under which
adults between the ages of 30 and 49 had to work at least 20 hours
per week, be engaged in community activities or receive exemptions
in order to continue to receive health care coverage. A federal
judge halted the program in April 2019, 10 months after it started,
but not before 18,000 adults had been removed from Medicaid for
noncompliance.

The findings: The new study, published in Health Affairs,
compared those in Arkansas who had been subject to the requirements
to those who had not been, and the population in Arkansas to the
population in other states. Researchers found no difference in
employment rates between populations, contrary to the argument put
forth by proponents of work requirements that they would inspire
people to get jobs. And they found that at least half of those who
lost their Medicaid coverage reported subsequent problems with
medical debt, delays in receiving care and delays in taking
medications.

The researchers also found that there was considerable confusion
about the program rules and serious barriers to reporting
participation status for Medicaid recipients in the state.

"In conclusion, our study showed that Arkansas’s work
requirements led to coverage losses associated with important
negative impacts on medical debt and affordability of care without
improving employment," the researchers wrote. "Our results should
provide a strong note of caution for federal and state policy
makers considering work requirement policies in the future."

Joan Alker, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center
for Children and Families who has been a critic of work
requirements, said Wednesday that the study shows that Medicaid
work requirements are not really designed to help the poor. "Let’s
be clear," Alker said,
"this policy is about punishing low income people."

Medicare Chief Spent Millions in Taxpayer Funds to Boost
‘Personal Brand’

Seema Verma, who runs the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services in the Trump administration, spent more than $3.5 million
in public funds on outside consultants who worked to "boost her
public profile and promote her personal brand," according to a
congressional
investigative report released Thursday.

Investigators found that in her first two years in office Verma
used CMS funds to retain consultants "with strong ties to
Republican political circles" who arranged media appearances,
handled communications and scheduled private meetings, including a
"Girl’s Night" party at the house of USA Today Washington Bureau
Chief Susan Page that cost taxpayers nearly $3,000.

The consultants charged up to $380 an hour for their public
relations work, and some claimed travel expenses of more than $500
per day, far above the limits set for federal employees. Other
eyebrow-raising spending cited by investigators includes $1,700 for
arranging lunches for Verma with individuals associated with Fox
News, the Washington Examiner and AARP; $977 to place an op-ed
written by Verma on Fox News; and $13,000 to place Verma on panels
and contend for awards like Washingtonian magazine's "Most Powerful
Women in Washington."

A group of Democratic lawmakers released a
statement Thursday calling on Verma to pay the
money back. "Our investigation found that Administrator Verma
misused funds appropriated by Congress and wasted taxpayer dollars
intended to support critical federal health care programs," they
said. "Congress did not intend for taxpayer dollars to be spent on
handpicked communications consultants used to promote Administrator
Verma’s public profile and personal brand. Administrator Verma has
shown reckless disregard for the public’s trust. We believe she
should personally reimburse the taxpayers for these inappropriate
expenditures."

This is not the first time critics have raised questions about
Verma’s use of taxpayer funds. Last year, Politico
reported that Verma had filed a request to be
reimbursed at public expense for the loss of items stolen from her
luggage during a work-related trip. The value of the stolen items
totaled $47,000 and included Ivanka Trump-branded jewelry worth
nearly $6,000.

Get more details on the Verma investigation at
Politico.

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