What's In Congress' Stimulus Package For This Pandemi

As said, here's what's in Congress' just-approved stimulus package to help the nation deal with this coronavirus pandemic.

Help for families

• The bill would provide direct payments of up to $1,200 for most individuals and $2,400 for most married couples filing jointly with an extra $500 for each child.
• Assistance would start to phase out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and for couples with more than $150,000 in income.
• Unemployment insurance benefits would be expanded, increasing the maximum benefit by $600 a week for up to four months. Benefits would be available to workers who are part-time, self-employed or part of the gig economy. People who are still unemployed after state benefits end could get an additional 13 weeks of help.
• Food assistance programs would get a boost as would programs to help low-income households avoid eviction and a program to improve internet access in rural areas.
• Homeowners with federally-backed mortgages would be protected from foreclosures for as long as 180 days.
• Students with federal loans could suspend payments until October.
• Students receiving Pell grants who have to drop out because of coronavirus would not be penalized. 

Help for small businesses

• The bill would give small businesses access to a nearly $350 billion loan program to cover monthly expenses like payroll, rent and utilities. The loans would not have to be repaid if businesses maintained their workforce.
• The eight weeks of assistance would be retroactive to Feb. 15, 2020 to help bring back workers who have already been laid off.

Help for corporations

• The package includes a financial lifeline to the hardest-hit industries, including passenger and cargo airlines. Another pot of money would be available to help other businesses for a combined $500 billion.
• Companies receiving assistance would be barred from raising the pay of certain executives.
• Any company receiving a government loan would be prohibited from buying back stocks while getting assistance as well for an additional year.
• Businesses controlled by the president, vice president, members of Congress and heads of federal agencies are not eligible for loans.
• Companies that kept on workers despite a significant loss of revenue could get a tax credit.
• The bill provides other tax relief to businesses by deferring tax payments, increasing deductibility for interest expenses and allowing immediate expensing of qualified property improvements, especially for the hospitality industry.

Help for health care providers

• Hospitals and medical centers would get billions to handle surging caseloads.
• Hospitals treating coronavirus patients would also get higher reimbursements form Medicare.
• Hospitals could request accelerated payments from Medicare.
• Across-the-board Medicare cuts that were part of a previous deficit reduction agreement would be temporarily halted.
• Extra funding for the Defense Department includes money to deploy the National Guard and use the Defense Production Act to help fast-track production of needed medical supplies to combat the coronavirus.
• Rules on using and paying for telehealth services would be eased.
• Funding would increase for federal agencies to speed work on therapies and a possible coronavirus vaccine, among other activities.
• When there is a vaccine, Medicare beneficiaries would not have to pay to receive it.

Help for state and local governments

• The package includes $150 billion to help state and local governments, which have had major unanticipated expenses while losing revenue. States would get a minimum amount and other funds would be allocated through a population-based formula.
• Disaster relief funding that state and local governments can access as well as a popular funding program for local governments would also be boosted.
• Child care programs would get a funding boost to help meet emergency staffing needs so health care workers and other critical workers will have child care.
• States, which have been postponing primaries, would get additional funds to make voting safer such as expanding early voting and the ability to vote by mail.
• Public transit agencies, which have lost ridership, would get $25 billion in assistance. Airports and Amtrak would also get billions of dollars of assistance.
• Schools and colleges could access nearly $31 billion to continue to teach students as schools are closed.
• State and local police and fire departments could get help paying for overtime and for medical items like personal protective equipment.
• The deadline for states to meet Real ID requirements for enhanced driver's licenses would be extended a year, to no earlier than October of 2021.

Help for the arts

• Museums, libraries and arts organizations across the country, which have been closing because of the pandemic, could get a boost from grants to state arts and humanities organizations.
• The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has been closed until May, would get $25 million so it can reopen its doors once the crisis is over.
• The Smithsonian Institution would get $7.5 million to help with teleworking, deep cleaning and overtime for security, medical staff, and zoo keepers.

Contributing: Nicholas Wu and Christal Hayes, USA TODAY.

Be careful, be safe out there, y'all and STAY HOME.

Continuing "W's" policies?

I just saw this headline, online:

US sticks with Bush-era polar bear rule

And Anytime I see a note where President Obama is continuing a George W. Bush policy, it gives me pause, at least.

The way I see it, continuing virtually anything that came out of that administration is likely a bad idea, with the exception of leaving Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his position. He does seem to both know what he's doing and is going in a new direction, with this new administration.

While President Bush's environmental policies were dismal for the environment, at best, they aren't the bigger issue here, for me. With this headline, it seems a good time to briefly discuss what we're doing as a country.

First, let's get the article out of the way.

The first paragraph tells the following: "The Obama administration on Friday let stand a Bush-era regulation that limits protection of the polar bear from global warming, saying that a U.S. law protecting endangered species should not be used to take on the much broader issue of climate change."

See? Right there it makes me think that following the Bush Administration's policies on this smaller issue is not a good idea and shouldn't be continued.

The bigger question for me here is, is the Obama Administration getting in bed with corporate America too much?

I fear the answer is likely yes and don't like it. They didn't vote him in and we don't want Corporate America screwing up the country and the world any further than they already have. We don't want them in charge. That's not the change we voted for.

The second, much larger concern for me that seems to be a continuation of W's policies is the whole stimulus package/spending bills President Obama is pursuing.

Sure, we have to "save the economy" and do what we can and have to, to make sure we don't go to heck but the question keeps coming up--do we REALLY need to spend all this money?

And isn't a lot of it going to be wasted anyway?

Timothy Geithner came from the very industry he's supposed to be saving. That doesn't seem good.

And we're throwing all the money at the banks and investment houses?

Didn't we find out during the Clinton Administration that was a bad idea?

Besides seemingly throwing large amounts of money at the very wealthy, which is blatantly so wrong and quite likely wasteful, another bad outgrowth of this boondoggle solution is that Republicans and everyone else can and will paint President Obama as a "Liberal, tax-and-spend left-winger", who doesn't really have solutions after all.

Never mind that it was Republican George W. Bush's administration that came up with the idea of the $700 billion safety fund. They'll just ignore that and blame this new, Democratic administration as though it was fully the new guy's idea, period.

Blowing all this money may well be a bad idea to begin with since 1) we have to throw it at the banks and the wealthy 2) we have to borrow it 3) it will likely be wasted, at least in large parts 4) it gives people opposing the President "ammunition" to paint him as this "tax-and-spender" 4) we're putting huge debt on future generations and 5) there is a good chance--high likelihood--that all this debt will give us rampant inflation later.

I don't know what the solutions to our financial system are and neither do a lot of people but I would suggest listening to the likes of the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, for starters. He seems to have answers and information and above all, IT'S NOTHING GEORGE W. BUSH WOULD HAVE PROPOSED.


Link to orginal story:
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090508/4a03ae40_3426_1335020090508356824549

Here's another one, too:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090505_taking_a_page_from_the_bush_playbook/?ln

All of a sudden

I'm just beginning to watch the new President of the United States give his first address toCongress and I'm struck already.

President Obama just gets to the podium and I was hit by the female Speaker of the House welcoming the African-American President for his speech.

Holy cow.

If you don't think we've come a long way and that this isn't a completely new country, with these changes, you're badly mistaken.

Wow.

Truly a new day.