Congressional leaders said late Wednesday that they are nearing agreement on a roughly $900 billion economic relief package that would include a second round of stimulus checks and could be completed by the end of this week, reports The Washington Post.
The money blast is going to be a doozy.
According to the Post, the package emerging is expected to include hundreds of billions of dollars in aid for ailing small businesses and jobless Americans; tens of billions of dollars in aid for other critical needs, such as vaccine distribution and schools; and a one-time check of between $600 and $700 for millions of Americans below a certain income threshold.
But lefty Democrats wanted even more of a money blast.
From the Post:
Tensions over the new package flared in the final stages of negotiations, with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) engaging in what multiple aides described as a heated exchange during an internal conference call Wednesday afternoon. Sanders pushed for the package to include more robust stimulus checks. Manchin has said unemployment benefits are more essential to approve and helped spearhead a bipartisan compromise that Sanders has derided as insufficient. Because lawmakers are trying to move the bill quickly, Sanders’s opposition could be enough to blow up the whole deal, infuriating members who are trying to rush it into law.
Asked about the exchange, Sanders said he had been candid in the private call with his belief that Democrats had given in too easily to Republican demands.
“The heat was exactly what I told you: I don’t understand how Democrats accepted — when you had [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin talking about $1.8 trillion and this large Heroes bill,” he said, citing House Democrats’ more than $3 trillion relief package from the summer. “I don’t know how Democrats started accepting a framework of only $900 billion.”
But Bernie might be sidelined here. More from the Post:
“The stimulus package is encouraging. It looks like it’s very, very close,” Biden said Wednesday in Wilmington, Del. “It’s a down payment. An important down payment that’s going to have to be done. … It’s very important to get done.”
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he is hoping for a deal “later today or early tomorrow morning.”
One positive, state and local relief funding appeared to fall out of the deal Wednesday because lawmakers were unable to reach a compromise with Republicans on coronavirus-related liability protections for corporations.
The lack of support on the state and local funding shows just how important at least one Republican win in the two Senate runoffs in Georgia on January 5 is.
The Post reports that negotiators kept the bill’s price tag below $1 trillion to maintain Republican support for the effort. If Democrats gain control of the Senate the money giveaway floodgate is going to open even more, as if spending a near-trillion dollars that the government doesn't have is not a big spending problem
So how will the government pay for a spending package where the till is empty?.
The Federal Reserve Board chairman, Jay Powell, has indicated a willingness to monetize the spending and more next year spending if the Democrats can get more through.
This, of course, is completely irresponsible money printing by Powell, and his Fedettes who don't object, and it is more in line with the type of policy one sees in such bastions of sound money as Zimbabwe.
-RW
That mask makes McConnell look like he's chinless. Oh Um, wait...
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