Finally Addressing Aid
By: Terry Schwadron
Tags: Unemployment, Coronavirus, Congress, Economy, Bipartisanship

-SF Gate Online

Terry H. Schwadron

Dec. 21, 2020

Once all the fuss settles over who can claim appropriate amounts of political credit — I hope none of the congressional leaders gets hurt as they stretch their arms to pat themselves on the back — there will be plenty for pundits and citizens to feast on in this huge compromise coronavirus aid agreement.

That’s because while the focus has been about the big items — getting aid directly to U.S. households and extending unemployment, which this does at half the amounts from the first bills last May, and getting loans for small businesses, which this does just as it did in the spring, the negotiators from all sides managed to slip in just enough of those favorite but irrelevant side items to leave a bitter taste.

For openers, the welcome relief monies are coming so late that thousands of small businesses, restaurants, bars have been forced to close, though the hope is that this lifeline will keep others afloat through the months of vaccines, though more companies are laying off employees either because of a worsening economy or for their own fortunes as companies. In any event, all seem to agree that this was a down-payment on aid that the incoming Biden administration will have to seek to extend all of it.

The bipartisanship extended not only towards finding things on which to agree, but on things on which to disagree so substantially that they are out of the bill altogether — like aid to states and sweeping limits on corporate liability for any bad behavior towards workers or consumers during the pandemic. Translated, it means the inevitably higher taxes will come from the states and localities rather than the federal government, and that suing an employer who tells workers to forgo protective gear is still frowned on among congressional Republicans.

Still, walking through the details, it was a little startling to learn that we had adopted another $1.4 billion in new funding for Donald Trump’s border wall and new border security technology, as well as adopting yet another corporate tax break for meal expenses as lobbied for by the White House. That latter was ostensibly to help revive restaurants — but ignores the fact that in-dining restaurants are being kept closed as we pass more and more severe weeks of the pandemic, effects that the same White House seems to think we don’t notice.

Still, the Congress actually did something, even if it was in as ugly a way as possible.

The good news:

Gig workers and freelancers are part of the extension of unemployment benefits, an acknowledgment that a huge number of people no longer work directly for a single employer — something we need to understand in consideration of health coverage that now depends on employer benefits. It extended coverage for the jobless whose benefits were expiring until March.

And while the Congress was forced to pass on direct aid to states, Congress found some alternatives.Democrats continued to hammer to some success to expand money for vaccine distribution itself, and the negotiations resulted in an agreement to extend the deadline for states and cities to use unspent money approved for them by the earlier Cares Act, giving states and cities until the end of the next year to spend billions of dollars before it expires and has to be returned.

The legislation includes $45 billion, for example, for transportation needs such as state transportation departments and Amtrak, which were disrupted by the pandemic. And there is $82 billion for schools, $20 billion for vaccine distribution, and $13 billion for a major expansion in food stamps — all costs that fall to eventually to the states.

The bill also provides $25 billion in emergency assistance to renters, although it remained unclear how that money would be disbursed.

There was general good news for small businesses, with $325 billion in relief funds for a duplicate of the earlier Paycheck Protection Program funding. The legislation also includes $45 billion for transportation needs such as state transportation departments and Amtrak, $82 billion for schools, $20 billion for vaccine distribution, and $13 billion for a major expansion in food stamps

The bad news:

From all the analysis circulating, it seems that this is a package that is too little too late, and that it won’t do the whole job it expects to do — for individuals, small businesses or the national economy.

Too much depends right now on how successful the vaccine and increased disease testing is at bringing down contagion numbers. Lowered disease can translate into business rebounds for more average businesses; the Wall Street bigs seem to do just fine through it all.

A political skeptic would say that this difficult a fight to do what seems an obvious aid package suggests a much more difficult fight ahead once Joe Biden takes office — and a lot dependent on the outcome of those two Georgia U.S. Senate seats up for a vote on Jan. 5.

Even the straight-forward parts of the bill are not exactly straight-forward. Evictions were put off for a month, to Jan. 31 from Dec. 31. Biden takes office on Jan. 20, leaving just 10 days including weekends to resolve a clearly needed extension beyond that arbitrary deadline.

A lot also is riding on just what happens once coronavirus vaccinations move beyond the first designated groups. There is no guidance on which industries will qualify as earliest “emergency workers” categories, and no federal policy discussions about whether employers can require vaccination to return to work. And whether the Biden Labor Department will take a much more aggressive role in inspecting workplaces for safety, for example.

At the end of the day, a whole lot of Washington is going to feel itself prideful about turning itself inside-out to achieve a modicum of bipartisanship over something that, while differences exist, should have been a no-brainer for months already.

Biden is going to tap into every bit of that mock pride, and quickly.

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