Republicans' New $1 Trillion Stimulus: Keep the Corporate Bailouts, Limit Checks for All

The new plan seeks to help an economy decimated by the coronavirus.

Republicans on Thursday released a new draft of the $1 trillion coronavirus stimulus that limits the proposed payments made directly to Americans but keeps loans and bailouts for both small and big businesses.

The new plan carves out $300 billion in loans for the former, many of which have been decimated by the government-mandated self-isolation put in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. Up to $10 million in loans would be available for each individual small business.

Also allotted in the package are $208 billion in loans and bailouts for "severely distressed sectors of the United States economy," with $50 billion set aside for passenger airline carriers, $8 billion reserved for cargo air carriers, and $150 billion up for grabs for "other eligible businesses." While the language there is vague, it likely refers to the hotel and casino industry, which President Donald Trump previously said he wanted to assist.

Several modifications have been made to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and airline excise taxes would also be lifted under the plan. Airline executives would be limited in what they can collect in compensation, and those companies would be required to continue service. The last stipulation may generate some pushback: Many small businesses, such as bars and restaurants, have been forced to close their doors or severely limit service as a result of government mandates, which is the reasoning employed by some lawmakers in bailing them out. Instructing airlines to do the opposite sends a confusing message that may complicate efforts to curb the infection rate.

Wednesday's version of the stimulus proposed sending Americans a check akin to a Universal Basic Income. Today's iteration further specifies that the "recovery rebates" would be limited to individuals who make less than $99,000 a year, tiered on family size, based on 2018's tax return. Each person would receive $1,200 and an additional $500 per child, with the total amount gradually decreasing for those who make $75,000 and above. The plan also curtails the paid leave that a smaller aid package enshrined into law yesterday.

Comments

[Longtobefree]

If anybody gets money, everybody should get money.
For the children.

[DH]

Joe Biden will be personally handing out checks to families with young females age 10-16.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

And by “checks”, you mean “checkups”, personal, hands-on, thorough, and tender.

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Right Hihn?

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[BastiatFan]

Corporate welfare, pure and symbol.

You can make a humanitarian case for helping out individuals affected by this, workers who’ve lost their jobs, etc., even when doing so with other folks’ money. But most of this trillion will go to shoring up the losses of those who are already wealthy (executives, stock holders, etc.)

[DH]

Ya if the government is going to make it rain just take all people who make under 100000? And just cut them a nice check. I would rather that then corporate shilling.

[NOYB2]

Corporate welfare, pure and symbol.

It would be corporate welfare if the state left businesses to do what they thought best during the outbreak. But if the state forces you to close your business, then the state is responsible for compensating you for the losses, just like any other taking.

You can make a humanitarian case for helping out individuals affected by this, workers who’ve lost their jobs, etc.

But the checks are not going to those affected; those affected are everybody who lost their job due to a government mandate, not everybody who earns little or no money. That’s why the help to individuals shouldn’t be a check based on income, it should be a tax credit.

[BYODB]

But if the state forces you to close your business, then the state is responsible for compensating you for the losses, just like any other taking.

Not that I disagree, but how much in sales would I have done this month if not for being shut down? Isn’t this accounting using a crystal ball? Sure, I could cite last years sales at the same time of year but was there a pandemic at this time last year?

[NOYB2]

Not that I disagree, but how much in sales would I have done this month if not for being shut down? Isn’t this accounting using a crystal ball?

The point I’m making is that people who didn’t lose any money directly due to government action shouldn’t be compensated for their losses; that’s pretty easy to determine: you need to prove you had an affected job or business in order to qualify for government payouts; it’s what you have to do with your tax return anyway.

You’re asking a different question: how much should those people who deserve compensation get compensated. That’s fairly easy, too, because reality limits us there: we can’t fully compensate them anyway. So, payouts will be a fraction of losses.

Tax breaks and “negative withholding” of taxes would be a good way of dealing with all of this. Sending a check to every American making less than $100k, on the other hand, is a political stunt.

[DenverJ]

It’s really not a political stunt. For people who live pay check to paycheck, and who’ve been forced to take time off, it’s the difference between making your rent and homelessness.

[Commenter_XY]

NOYB2….I would like you to consider this: What do people do in the meantime from job (wage) loss to tax time where they ‘pay’ a negative income tax and receive money? There is a timing issue, and a cash flow issue. People live in the here and the now. They have to eat. Through no fault of their own, they are unemployed. When this happens in ‘onesies and twosies’ it is no big deal. File for unemployment, get a check, get a new job. At any given time, we have somewhere around 10MM-12MM total unemployed, with maybe 200K filing new claims weekly.

What we have here is something very, very different. It is literally a national emergency. We don’t have 1 or 2 out of work…we literally have millions affected all at once. And because of the quarantine, there are very few jobs to go to. Who is hiring? Answer: Right now, pretty much nobody.

I am not a fan of just cutting checks willy-nilly. Quite the opposite. But what we have here is without precedent: A nearly full and complete shutdown of our economy for an indeterminate period. There is no analogue in history for this. It is completely uncharted territory.

No one has the ‘right’ answer. The right answer won’t be known for some time. In the meantime, we are about to have millions unemployed (however temporary) and just leaving them to their own devices at the curb is really not an option.

[Vince Smith]

You already outed yourself as a libtard.

[Agammamon]

The argument you make for forcibly extracting other people’s money and giving it to individuals (while, of course, putting a nice little percentage into your own pocket) is the exact same argument made for doing this for corporations.

Because what is a corporation if not a collection of individuals? And we’ve already seen that so many, many, many, people believe the ‘rights’ of the collective outweight the rights of the individual that its only right that this money should go to support these collectives.

[JFree]

Because what is a corporation if not a collection of individuals?

A partnership is a collection of individuals. And even then not really
A corporation is a state grant of privilege to some forms of property.

Your strain of propertarianism is nothing more than asserting that individuals are property. With fewer rights and privileges than corporate property.

You would have been right at home in the antebellum South

[De Oppresso Liber]

Bit overwrought, no?

[monikagerztes]

yeah exactly what I wanted to say

[Agammamon]

So, corporations are not composed of individuals?

And ‘my strain of propertarianism’ – you have no idea what I think. You’re making assumptions based on *sarcasm*. But I will tell you that I don’t think collectives have fewer rights than individuals, they have the same rights. Because they are all composed of individuals.

[Rossami]

No

[StackOfCoins]

The corporation, as a legal person, is better equipped to survive a pandemic, having no biology and hence requiring no immune response. It also, incidentally, tends to have greater resources than some random wagie.

[Agammamon]

So you’re saying ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs?’

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Corporate welfare is what the Republicans do.

[DesigNate]

It’s what they both do Chipper. It’s not like the Republicans controlled congress during the last round of ridiculous corporate bailouts.

Come to think of it, Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House then too.

[Mother's lament]

It’s almost like a Democrat controlled house doesn’t even exist if there’s someone to blame.

[Agammamon]

Yes, yes, only Republicans. Democrats never do that, right?

[ErinS]

It is pure and simple a handout for corporations that couldn’t make enough in the market this year.

[BYODB]

It doesn’t matter who the government cuts checks to, it’s theater either way.

It seems the Republican theory in this giveaway is that if you give to a business someone doesn’t get fired, whereas if they gave cash to everyone it’ll delay them going broke by less than a month.

Both are stupid, and are basically the government trying to stumblefuck solve the problem they just created themselves. Seems obvious which of the two solutions is the dumber option, but who really cares?

I guarantee that if Trump cut a check to every American, he’d be accused of buying votes though. Perhaps even rightly so.

[NOYB2]

It seems the Republican theory in this giveaway is that if you give to a business someone doesn’t get fired, whereas if they gave cash to everyone it’ll delay them going broke by less than a month.

No, the theory is actually entirely different: by denying businesses the ability to operate and denying workers the ability to work, the state is essentially taking their property and their labor from them; such takings by the state need to be compensated under the Constitution.

But the correct application of that principle is to compensate just those businesses and workers that are prohibited from working, not to open the money spigot for everybody who needs money.

[BYODB]

And where exactly is the authority to shut down businesses and limit gatherings jotted down in the constitution, one might ask. Honestly curious where this particular power resides. I did a quick search, and I gotta say I wasn’t surprised that it supposedly derives from the commerce clause.

If you accept that the government can flip the economy off like a light switch, you’ve sort of given up the notion of a limited government in my view.

I suppose if we view this as a legal government taking, we’d need some way to measure exactly how much they took. As far as I’m aware, that isn’t even possible in this case.

[Jerryskids]

I’ve seen plenty of people citing the little-known “emergency powers” clause that allows the government to suspend the Constitution in times of emergency and now is not the time to be worried about the legal niceties. Which is of course the very time to be worried about the legal niceties – if the Constitution only protects you from the government in times when you least need protecting and can be whisked away by the government in times when you most need protecting from the government, well, it ain’t really worth a fart in a windstorm, is it?

I think there was even a mention here that the coronavirus is really, when you think about it, a foreign invasion which makes this a war and the government’s wartime powers are essentially unlimited so the Constitution can just be thrown out the window.

Which makes me think of all the times I’ve pointed out to people that the war on poverty and the war on drugs and the war on this and that aren’t merely metaphorical wars – by declaring it a war, the government is declaring that it intends to use its extraordinary and extra-constitutional powers to do whatever it takes to win, authority be damned.

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

Even with a lack of wind, is there really any worth to a fart?

If timed correctly, I suppose it could be funny.

[Vince Smith]

Where is this “emergency clause”?

[NOYB2]

And where exactly is the authority to shut down businesses and limit gatherings jotted down in the constitution, one might ask. Honestly curious where this particular power resides.

Local and state governments have these powers under the Constitution. And the shutdowns so far have been at the local and state level.

Arguably, the federal government doesn’t, except for matters related to defense and interstate commerce. Theoretically, a state could refuse to comply with the exercise of federal emergency powers outside those areas, and theoretically it could refuse federal emergency funding for its citizens, but what reason would a state have to do that?

[Jerryskids]

Shoulda just made Mike Bloomberg write them million dollar checks.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Photo caption:
“….and the lettuce there grew THIS high!”

[Fist of Etiquette]

WHERE MY MONEY BITCH

[ErinS]

I think you mean ‘Where my money be at bitch’ and heck yeah. I normally would not want it but if it me vs. Delta Airlines then heck yeah.

[Eddy]

“Never mind the balances, just the checks.”

[DenverJ]

Ha!

[wearingit]

Corporate welfare- the Republican (and Democrat, why not) way.

They do stock buybacks with their huge corporate tax cut and then come with hat in hand to the American people. Fuck them, and fuck every politician supporting this bullshit.

[DesigNate]

Amen.

[Nardz]

http://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-live-white-house-task-force-holds-thursday-briefing

[Vince Smith]

Clinton was a better president than Trump. He actually balanced the budget.

[Jmaie]

Here we have, boys and girls, a grim example of the dangers to thought and reason posed by blind partisanship.

Bill Clinton was a better president then Trump for many reasons, but balancing the budget is not one of them. Presidents sign but do not write spending legislation, that falls to congress which for those not old enough to remember was Repub controlled in the late 90’s.

Does that mean that Repubs are actually more fiscally responsible that Dems? Gonna have to give that an “ah hell nah” and suggest that the low deficits of the late 90’s was part and parcel due to massive tax receipts generated by the booming tech industry.

Cheers.

[Vince Smith]

Clinton’s tax hikes were what balanced the budget, coupled with the dot com boom and cuts to welfare that he supported. Do I agree with Clinton’s ideology? No. But facts are facts.

[Jmaie]

You mean the tax hikes and welfare reform legislation passed by the (Repub controlled) legislature? You are indulging in confirmation bias, Clinton deserved as much credit for the late 90’s booming economy as Obama deserved responsibility for the 2008 economic crash.

[Vince Smith]

Dems controlled Congress when he raised taxes. Clinton supported welfare reform and signed it. Which party controlled Congress is not relevant to that.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

The new plan seeks to help an economy decimated by government and media over-reaction to the coronavirus.

FIFY

[$parcasmic, a love connection]

Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhfOld Mex and SQRLSY
March.19.2020 at 9:01 pm

FTFY Hihn.

[DenverJ]

Squirlsy isn’t Hihn, I’m sure. The others I don’t know, but I never saw Hihn whining about plastic flutes.

[DesigNate]

You misspelled government, Billy.

[Case of the Mondays]

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says

[BikeRider]

Figures. No industry is too large for a bailout but the poor guy or gal making $100,000 is too rich to get anything. This is why people don’t support Universal Basic Income. Even when it’s attempted, it’s not really universal.

[shortviking]

If it matters to anyone here, California officially fell to fascism tonight

[Gray_Jay]

Didn’t Pennsylvania just join them?

This is nuts. The virus will be bad, unless this cocktail pans out or we get a vaccine, but steps like PA and CA’s will throw us into a Depression. The Fed is already creating a trillion dollars out of thin air, and who thinks that number won’t skyrocket? The stock market has lost about a 1/3 of its value from a month ago. Maybe it’ll hold? Oh, and China is whipping up its population with propaganda that this is all our fault.

I have elderly relatives. I do believe in the projections that a half million to a million and a half or more could die this year from this. Cases and deaths here are still doubling every 3.5 days.

The economic damage from trying to fight this is still going to be worse. Never mind the new emergency powers all of these state and federal leaders are enjoying dusting off. I’m sure those won’t be abused.

[Nardz]

http://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-equity-futures-tumble-after-california-state-wide-stay-home-order

[SIV]

Are they really going to bailout stockholders as Binion reports, or will they be liquidated in bankruptcy?

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[DenverJ]

Well, it’s time for some civil disobedience and some law suits. Nobody, not the local mob, not the mayor, not the governor, and not the president, has the legal authority to bankrupt millions of Americans, pandemic or no.

[Let MAGA off at the next stop]

Republicans are the worst. You know it’s true.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Not nearly as bad as slack-jawed, slope-foreheaded hicklib pederasts.

[I am the 0.000000013%]

Isn’t that the truth. If it weren’t for the Republicans we’d all live in a paradise. I for one plan to send every cent of my one time $1,000 check that I’ll get in lieu of having a job to the Democrats.

That will show those evil Republicans.

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