Pharmaceutical manufacturers may have delivered serviceable COVID-19 vaccines in record time, but for others in both the U.S. public and private sectors timeliness is not exactly a virtue.
Congress has approved a deal to provide a $900 billion coronavirus aid package. “If things continue on this path and nothing gets in the way, we’ll be able to vote tomorrow,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters late Saturday. A deadline for preventing a government shutdown looms tonight, and congressional leaders plan to pass the stimulus bill today alongside a $1.4 trillion government funding package.
The stimulus plan includes $300 per week in unemployment benefits and a single $600 payment to individuals. The agreement gelled after senators resolved an impasse involving Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania’s insistence that the Federal Reserve’s lending powers be restrained. Details of the agreement are not clear at present, but CNN reports it includes $330 billion for small business loans, plus over $80 billion for schools, and billions more for distributing COVID-19 vaccines. Stories I scanned provided no update on eviction protections in the stimulus bill.
It is not enough, of course. The compromise represents perhaps as much as Democrats can get and the most Republicans will concede to the incoming Biden-Harris administration while trying not to appear Scrooges the week of Christmas. Should the bills pass the House and Senate today, someone will have to get the outgoing president’s phone out of his hand long enough to sign them both before funding expires.
The dealmaker-in-chief is nowhere to be found. He is too busy trying to cover Russia’s backside over the massive network hacks being discovered by government agencies. That is, when he is not in the Oval Office with his merry band of lunatics plotting and screaming about how he might still overturn the results of the November election. Declaring martial law was even under consideration, per reports.
Donald J. Trump was too preoccupied with himself to celebrate the emergency use authorization of a second COVID-19 vaccine last week, or to model responsible behavior by getting the shot on camera as his vice president did. On “Saturday Night Live,” Vice President Mike Pence (played by Beck Bennett) assured Americans the vaccine is safe, “That’s why President Trump refuses to take it about it or talk about it.” And because while Trump may have deserted his post, “he still cares deeply about not going to prison.”
After allowing said president to firehose disinformation via its platform for years — much of it deadly in 2020 — Twitter finally began adding disclaimers to Trump tweets this spring. Over six weeks after the Nov. 3 election, Twitter finally has added a new advisory label to Trump’s tweets:
“Following certification of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we’ve updated our label to reflect the latest information,” a Twitter spokesperson told Variety.
If cleanliness is next to godliness, timeliness saves lives. How many might have been saved this year had more people in leadership positions acted sooner rather than dragging their feet?
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