Happy Hostage Days!
As if 10 months of on-and-off shutdowns, business failures, masks and social distancing were not enough 2020 misery, Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted on using the American population as hostages in economic relief negotiations. A second stimulus bill has languished in the Senate since summer as businesses struggled and failed and as Americans died and died and died. A haunting photo on the New York Times’ landing page this morning shows downtown Minneapolis this month nearly deserted at rush hour. Aid has come too late for many small businesses.
On this winter solstice of 2020, a $900 billion economic relief package finally is expected to get a vote in Congress. It is under half the size of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted in March. McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced late Sunday that the deal was ready for a vote. There will be declarations that help is on the way and posturing for the cameras.
The Times reports:
Still, even as it prepared to pass a consequential measure, Congress was at the peak of its dysfunction, having left so little time to complete it that lawmakers faced a series of contortions to get it across the finish line. With additional time needed to transform their agreement into legislative text, both chambers had to approve a one-day stopgap spending bill — their third such temporary extension the past 10 days — to avoid a government shutdown while they were finalizing the deal.
Both chambers approved the measure on Sunday night, and President Trump signed it shortly before midnight. Final votes on the spending package were expected as early as Monday to approve it and clear it for Mr. Trump’s signature, but had yet to be scheduled.
Although text was not immediately available, the agreement was expected to provide $600 stimulus payments to millions of American adults earning up to $75,000. It would revive lapsed supplemental federal unemployment benefits at $300 a week for 11 weeks — setting both at half the amount provided by the original stimulus law.
The Washington Post provides a summary here.
The agreement omits the business liability shield from virus-related lawsuits to which McConnell had held the bill and suffering Americans hostage for months. The bill extends until the end of January the moratorium on evictions set to expire this month. It also provides $25 billion emergency assistance to renters.
Stimulus checks could begin going out to Americans with direct-deposit accounts about two weeks after passage. Those receiving paper checks or debit cards by mail could take two months as happened last spring. And those of very low income who do not file tax returns (perhaps 12 million)? It is going to be a very long winter.
When you haven’t any coal in the stove
“Money Money” from Cabaret
And you freeze in the winter
And you curse to the wind at your fate
When you haven’t any shoes on your feet
Your coat’s thin as paper
And you look 30 pounds underweight
When you go to get a word of advice
From the fat little pastor
He will tell you to love evermore
But when hunger comes to rap
Rat-a-tat rat-a-tat at the window
(At the window!)
Who’s there? (hunger) oh, hunger!
See how love flies out the door
Hunger and cold are not the only things knocking at the window, Ed Kilgore suggests. Miscalculations about pre-election leverage and the pandemic subsiding stalled progress on the relief package. There are checks for now, but austerity is on its way:
What [the bill] may ultimately be known for, however, is a brief bipartisan oasis at a moment when bipartisanship has been all but forgotten and may soon become extinct altogether. Sometimes a national emergency cuts through such barricades as the Republican Party’s long-established hostility to public sector activism. But if Joe Biden’s ascent to the presidency does indeed represent a return to normalcy, part of that normalcy will likely include a return to GOP obstruction and partisan gridlock.
As surely as spring follows winter, once the Biden administration moves into the West Wing, fiscal conservatives will be born-again deficit hawks.
Meantime, as we head toward Christmas this week I worry about local restaurants going under, including those owned by friends. This town is heavily (over-) dependent on tourism and January and February are lean times in normal years. We try to order takeout from our favorites regularly to try to keep them going where we can. But some simply may not make it.
Edward Lee of the restaurant 610 Magnolia in Louisville tells Bon Appetit, “This is the end of the independent restaurant era, and I don’t know any chef in their right mind who feels hopeful right now. We have meal kits; we’re getting heaters. But at the end of the day, I’m on the Titanic, trying to throw out buckets of water to stay afloat. It’s the fluctuations that really hurt us.”
Stuck at home, shunning the usual family gatherings, we are hoping to order Christmas dinner (French comfort food) from friends’ restaurant. It is not much, but it is what we can do.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here: