MIND BLOWING !!! Heather Cox Richardson - July 24, 2020 - Letters From An American

[applegrove]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com


"SNIP.....


The coronavirus bill that Congress passed in March attached an extra $600 weekly federal payment to state unemployment benefits. Those state benefits usually cover only about 45% of a worker’s wage. The extra federal money was designed to make up some of the difference between state unemployment benefits and people’s actual needs in the short term (the money is taxable, so some of it will have to be given back next April). There are different plans for extending this boost, but some Republicans worry that the extra money is more than people can make working, and it will discourage them from seeking work, although the coronavirus is making work hard to find. With mounting closures after the new spike in coronavirus cases, there were 1.4 million new unemployment claims last week.

Republicans in the Senate rejected the Democrats’ stimulus bill, passed by the House of Representatives in May, but in two months have not been able to agree on a way forward. Now McConnell says he hopes they’ll have a deal in a few weeks.

This timing is strikingly poor. The end to federal unemployment support hits just as the moratorium on evictions, also passed in March, ends. That moratorium meant renters could not be evicted for inability to pay their rent, but the rent continued to accumulate. Now, the moratorium is ending. There are 110 million Americans living in rented apartments, and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project estimates that between 19 and 23 million of them risk eviction before September.

The most vulnerable households are low-income and people of color, and eviction will, of course, cause extraordinary hardship. But there is another brutal calculation in this catastrophic timing: evicted adults will be far less likely to vote.

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[applegrove]

1. Democrats need to get on this.

[cayugafalls]

2. It's almost as if they are burying themselves. This will not go well for trump at all.

The rethugs look even worse if this does not get resolved.

So many people are going to suffer, heck they already are suffering. The callousness of these criminals is just disgusting.

The fact that they want to wait a few weeks is just stupid and will result in so much pain and suffering.

I can't fathom how they can sleep at night.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

3. To repukes, we're just a bunch of bugs...

That their money comes from. 🤬

[Kaiserguy]

4. They have no problem sleeping

since the suffering isn't happening to the 1%. The GOP doesn't give a damn about what happens to the rest of us.