Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/15/house-passes-3-trillion-relie.html
$3 Trillion Coronavirus stimulus bill called ‘HEROES Act’
8 Likes
Republican Senators on board with DOA are themselves declaring their candidacy positions vis a vis sanctity of life.
8 Likes
The cruelty, as often noted, is the point for the Republican Party. And they are never ones to let a good crisis go to waste.
13 Likes
Of course, lots of money for struggling corporations, but not a penny to real people who need it. Asswipes…
14 Likes
The politics of this are very easy from the bad guys’ perspective. If you simply oppose the lockdown itself, then everything is the Democrats’ fault. There’s no reason to support relief efforts, because the more GOP voters lose their jobs / homes / public services, the more they will vote against the Democrats. They will vote against them even harder for trying to prevent it.
I don’t think there’s anything that could make the GOP pay a political price with its base at this point. Anyone who’s stuck with them this far has been so degraded that the only atom of dignity left to them is the pretence that they still don’t see the obvious truth. Although, I guess the political impact of the rona is still untested; perhaps there are a handful of people who will say “I didn’t mind the explicit, gloating corruption, the Nazi rallies or the concentration camps, but THIS is where I draw the line”.
10 Likes
The White House response, apart from declaring the House bill DOA, has been of the “when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail” school. Larry Kudlow went on Fox Business and proposed slashing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 10.5% for companies that move their operations back to the US. He says he wants to create “incentive-oriented torque for the economy,” whatever the fuck that is.
Also discussed: the possibility of a payroll tax cut, and reduction of the middle class rate to 15%.
Not discussed? How further cuts to the corporate tax rate will restart an economy that is stopped because 70% of the populace fears they are endangered by their government’s incompetent and inadequate response to the pandemic.
Also not discussed? How a payroll tax cut is going to help the 36.5 million people who have lost their jobs since March.
They’re like a kid standing at the back of a middle school orchestra, beating the hell out of a triangle.* They’ve got one thing they know how to do, and they’re going to do it as hard as possible, whether it works or not.
* Seen it, heard it, winced.
14 Likes
Well, this is going to go nowhere quickly. Still, I do get that the idea is more to make a statement than anything else.
Austerity budgets kill people. Donny & gang want to kill people. That’s been obvious for awhile. Drink bleach and go away.
1 Like
RTFBill … this one is bad news for americans. Too much pork for health insurance companies, most recently boasting about record profits in Q1.
Never been a better time to purchase some bitcoin.
US just passed 1.5 million cases with 90,000 deaths officially
which means unofficially it’s likely twice both those numbers
Moscow-Mitch knows that, he just does. not. care.
well unless it’s ultra-alt-right judges he can pack the courts with endlesses, that’s he cares enough to bring back everyone to DC in the middle of a pandemic
I don’t think we’re even making it to the election, seriously, and just imagine what kind of sh*t is going to go down where there is nothing to lose a week or two before/after
What page?
1 Like
This link should get you to the section…
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/hr6800/text/ih#link=C_III_B&nearest=HF2092534976C4B1CBA8C4EE4B05BD9C2
What they’re proposing is a federal subsidy to pay premiums directly to health insurance corporations, which if you scroll all the way up to the cost breakdown you’ll find that it is a significant portion of the newly minted $3T. What they’re doing is printing money when money in this situation is largely meaningless and useless. At a time when everyone is needing to come together to solve a common problem, the enemy (congress) is further dividing the nation on the grounds of cashflow. Fact of the matter is, they’re printing enough money, now and in the past few weeks, to pay almost everyone a handsome salary. Where is that money going? What do you think is going to happen when that new cash eventually circulates? What’s the strategy for deleting some of this money later? You’re going to see massive inflation and (I’m predicting) the death of the dollar as a global currency standard.
You have to realize that these insurances are businesses and think about what they do with their money when they receive it. Sure, some of it goes to pay doctors, but they are heavily incentivized to NOT pay doctors which is the very definition of their bottom line. This double-edged sword is the crux and crucifix of capitalism - ensuring your buddies and benefactors get the bail-out.
Personally I would like to see the HEROES act or something like it turn into basic income. If you’re going to print a bunch of money, everyone might as well get some. If you filled out the census, you get a friggin check. But hey, never let a good crisis go to waste, eh?
Because that would be a sure winner in the Republican controlled senate.
1 Like
Thanks; when you wrote “RTFBill” I wondered whether you really meant that people should read all 1800 pages before choosing to support it. I’m impressed if you did.
The COBRA subsidy you link, aka the Worker Health Coverage Protection Act, is designed to make sure people who lose their jobs can continue their current insurance. It is widely supported by a variety of patient advocacy organizations (see below). I agree that it will enable insurers’ ability to charge a high “employers” rate for coverage. The estimates I’ve seen for the subsidy is $110billion (of the $3trillion bill), but these private plans typically are 100% inefficient over Medicare, so say $55billion wasted in the form of gifts to the insurance industry. That is a lot of money, but the rest of the bill is so important, containing not only income support but also things like a USPS bailout, critical for a fair election in November, that to me it seems worth satisfying the demands for the provision by the bluedogs who otherwise might not have supported the full bill.
That’s how politics works. You don’t generally get to have just the provisions you like.
OK, here’s a partial list of organizations supporting this provision (from https://www.diabetes.org/newsroom/press-releases/2020/support-hr6514-worker-health-coverage):
ALS Association
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
American Diabetes Association
American Heart Association
American Kidney Fund
American Lung Association
Arthritis Foundation
Cancer Support Community
Chronic Disease Coalition
Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Epilepsy Foundation
Hemophilia Federation of America
JDRF
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
March of Dimes
Muscular Dystrophy Association
National Alliance on Mental Illness
National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship
National Health Council
National Hemophilia Foundation
National Kidney Foundation
National Organization for Rare Disorders
National Patient Advocate Foundation
National Psoriasis Foundation
Pulmonary Hypertension Association
Susan G. Komen
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society
WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease
4 Likes
they’ve moved passed the bi-partisan moment and are back to business as usual, as an election is coming. 100,000 or more deaths is worth it, since they believe it’s mostly the Democratic base who is dying. they will refuse ANY bill that Pelosi sends over, because she’s a Democrat. We’re back to that.
6 Likes
Yep… we can only hope their evil, inhuman reactions get them all voted out. If not, we’re fucked.
6 Likes
Those damn “do nothing Democrats”. Can’t seem to get anything done, right? /s
7 Likes
Infantilisation of politics. That’s what this is.
1 Like
