The Progressive Populist Today Blog: 2020-08-09

Friday, August 14, 2020

Editorial: Trump’s COVID Relief Con

After his own negotiators refused to strike a deal with House Democrats to provide aid for pandemic victims, Donald Trump announced a series of executive orders — some of them plainly illegal — to substitute for congressional action and trick the public into believing that he was acting boldly when, in fact, he was accomplishing little.

In the clubhouse of his Bedminster, N.J., golf course, with an audience of millionaires cheering him on, Trump on Aug. 8 announced he would suspend collection of payroll taxes through the end of year; extend the unemployment “booster” at $300 a week (down from the previous $600 Congress authorized from March through July); help families “stay in their homes”; and waive student debt payments through the end of 2020.

There is considerable fine print, however. Mainly, he lacks the authority to do most of it, as the US Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and any changes to taxes or spending are supposed to come through Congress.

Trump blamed Democrats for obstructing congressional action, forcing him to take matters in his own hands, but that is the opposite of reality: House Democrats in May passed a $3.4 trillion bill that included $437 billion to keep the $600 weekly boost for the jobless until January, and $413 billion to send a second round of stimulus checks to all families. The Democrats also proposed to bolster rental and mortgage assistance, help small businesses and provide other safety net protections, as well as $430 billion to help schools safely reopen, $1 trillion to help cash-strapped cities and states pay essential workers and prevent layoffs, and $25 billion to bail out the US Postal Service. Trump is dead-set against assisting the Postal Service and Democratic cities and states.

Senate Republicans took no action on the House bill until late July, when they countered with spending in the range of $1 trillion, including $200 a week for unemployment through September; one-time stimulus checks of $1,200; $105 billion for schools and nothing for cities and states, but $1.75 billion for a new FBI headquarters and nearly $30 billion for military spending. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also insisted in immunizing employers from liability for failing to protect their workers against COVID-19.

After hitting an impasse with the Dems, Senate Republicans left town; the Dems tried to negotiate with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who were not much interested in making a deal, either, even after the Democrats offered to split the difference and cut their bill to a $2 trillion price tag. The White House stuck to $1 trillion, tops.

After Mnuchin and Meadows packed it in, Trump issued his proclamations, the most troubling of which was his instruction to the Treasury to stop collecting workers’ payroll taxes for the rest of the year, which would defund Social Security and Medicare.

Payroll taxes may be deferred, but they will still be due in full next year. It won’t help people who have lost their jobs, because they’re not on the payroll, and it won’t help employers, because Congress already deferred their portion of the payroll taxes through 2021 in the CARES Act, which passed in March, but Democrats made sure the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were replenished for that lost revenue.

Trump gave away the game when he went off script to explain that if he is re-elected, he would “terminate” those payroll taxes permanently. Right wingers have been promoting such a “payroll tax holiday” in their continuing effort to defund Social Security and Medicare, which rely on the payroll taxes to pay for seniors’ monthly benefits and medical care. When resulting deficits appear, Republicans will step up their demands that the programs be privatized.

Trump used the same scam in his attempt to dismantle the Postal Service, using the collapse of business mail revenue due to the pandemic as an excuse to appoint a major donor as Postmaster General to sabotage the Postal Service. At a time when many election officials are finding it difficult to staff polling places during the pandemic, Trump fears making it easier to vote by mail would ruin his re-election chances.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said Trump’s executive order, which seeks to defer Social Security contributions, is bad enough. “But his promise to ‘terminate’ FICA contributions if he is reelected is a full-on declaration of war against current and future Social Security beneficiaries,” she said.

“Every member of Congress must speak up now to denounce Donald Trump’s unconstitutional raid on Social Security. Voters should treat any Senator or Representative who is silent as complicit in destroying Social Security. Furthermore, every American who cares about Social Security’s future must do everything they can to ensure that Trump does not get a second term.”

Trump also proposes to continue unemployment assistance at $300 a week, without involving Congress. Under his plan, the aid would only go to people who receive at least $100 a week in state unemployment comp, which would leave out those who have exhausted their state unemployment assistance. The feds’ share would come from $44 billion in Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Fund. But that would cover less than five weeks of payments for 30 million unemployed Americans. That isn’t enough money to make it to October, unless the number of people on unemployment falls dramatically. And God help those in the path of hurricanes, tornadoes and massive fires, because FEMA will be tapped out.

Trump is instructing federal officials to “consider” whether there should be a ban on evictions, and to look for more funds to help renters, but he doesn’t promise anything.

There could be 30 million to 40 million renters at risk of eviction in the coming months, according to report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Trump apparently has the authority to waive interest on student loans held by the federal government through the end of 2020 and allow. people to delay payments until Dec. 31. But the bills will come due again in January.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post noted that these executive actions will have little impact on the economic crisis Americans are facing. “But just as Trump claims that his handling of the pandemic itself has been a story of unmitigated success, when he performed a signing ceremony before a crowd of dues-paying members at one of his golf clubs, he said the executive orders ‘will take care of pretty much this entire situation.’”

Meanwhile, the nation continues to suffer from a lack of leadership on controlling the coronavirus. If the US had done a proper lockdown in March, with federal authorities providing vigorous testing and contact tracing, encouraging social isolation and providing enough financial aid to absorb the effects of business closures, we’d be back in business now, as are the European Union, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Canada.

Instead, with Trump leaving it to each governor to deal with the coronavirus in their own states, and a lagging testing system that has prevented effective tracking of the virus, the US has recorded more than five million cases of COVID-19, 163,000 fatalities so far — about 22% of the world’s death toll — and an unknown number of survivors who may have chronic health problems even after their “recovery.” And Republicans are still in a rush to reopen schools. Good luck. And wear a mask. — JMC