Speaking on the Senate floor a short time later, McConnell blamed Democrats for the expiration of emergency unemployment benefits, because Democrats objected when Republicans tried last week to renew them on a short-term basis. House Democrats passed a $3.4 trillion bill in May that would extend the $600 extra weekly benefit through January, but Republicans didn’t offer a counter-proposal or start negotiating until last week, at which point the benefit expiration was imminent.
If the massive explosion that rocked Lebanon’s capital was an accident, it was an accident waiting to happen, says Michael Anton, former national security spokesman for President Trump.
If Tuesday’s massive explosion in Beirut was an accident — as authorities claim — “it was an accident waiting to happen,” former Trump national security spokesman Michael Anton told “Bill Hemmer Reports” Wednesday.
Anton told guest host John Roberts the substance which ignited to cause the powerful blast was ammonium nitrate — a key component of agricultural fertilizer that had been stored in a warehouse at Beirut’s port since 2013, when it was offloaded from a Russian-leased ship that had made an unscheduled stop there.
Anton added that Lebanon’s government has been in a state of turmoil for more than four decades and is neither completely functional, nor does it have full control of all of its territory.
“I think the government itself will have a hard time getting a handle on this and American intelligence will be looking at it too,” he said. “Any time something happens in Lebanon … this country has been wracked by terrorism, civil war and economic deprivation for decades. Out of such difficult situations, it’s hard to find the truth.”
Roberts noted that U.S. officials have told Fox News they have no evidence to support President Trump’s claim Tuesday that the Lebanese explosion was the result of a bomb. Anton said that, unlike some other combustible substances, ammonium nitrate does need more effort than a simple match to ignite.
According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, Tuesday’s blast killed 135 people and injured approximately 5,000 others.
Donald Trump has claimed children are “virtually immune” to the novel coronavirus while pushing for schools to reopen nationwide amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The president repeated his assertion that young people do not suffer severe symptoms associated with Covid-19 during a Wednesday morning interview on the network’s morning show, Fox & Friends. He also noted that older teachers “shouldn’t be going in” during the pandemic, or as he put it: “Until this thing goes by.”
It’s a talking point Mr Trump has used in several recent interviews while demanding schools open for in-person classes throughout the fall, even as many states across the country face a reemergence of the novel virus, which has already killed at least 155,000 Americans, according to daily tracking data.
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He previously said children were “virtually immune” on Tuesday night during an interview with Lou Hobbs, though he has not offered any evidence to back the assertion.
Meanwhile, growing evidence indicates young people do, in fact, suffer from severe cases of Covid-19, with some survivors reporting extensive complications that have lasted far longer than the typical two-week window in which many patients show signs of infection.
“You know, young people, they have better immune systems than we do, Lou, I hate to tell you this,” Mr Trump said. “They are in very good shape. Virtually, virtually immune from this disease.”
On Wednesday morning, the president also repeated false claims that his administration inherited “nothing” from that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, when it came to critical supplies to battle the pandemic, like ventilators. There were an estimated 19,000 ventilators in the national stockpile by the time Mr Trump took office.
He continued to put the claim about young people and the coronavirus throughout the interview, saying: “It doesn’t have an impact on them.”
“I’ve watched some doctors say they’re ‘totally immune,’ I don’t know I hate to use the word ‘totally,’ the news will say, ‘Oh, he made the word totally and he shouldn’t have used that word,’” the president added. “But the fact is they are virtually immune from this problem, and we have to open our schools.”
The comments come as many schools throughout the US announce reopening plans and prepare for students to return, with some already returning to classrooms beginning this month. Mr Trump also claimed the virus would simply disappear, as he has since the start of the pandemic, when discussing school reopening.
“My view is the schools should open,” he concluded. “This thing’s going way. it will go away like things go away, and my view is schools should reopen.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows in front of a memorial to people who were killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
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Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows in front of a memorial to people who were killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
The dawn of the nuclear age began with a blinding, flesh-melting blast directly above the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It was 8:16 a.m. on a Monday, the start of another work day in a city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants. An estimated two-thirds of that population — nearly all civilians — would soon be dead.
The dropping by American warplanes of that first atomic bomb, code-named Little Boy — and another, code-named Fat Man, three days later in Nagasaki — led to Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the end of World War II.
At the time, the morality and legality of those nuclear attacks was hardly the subject of public debate.
“Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war,” President Harry Truman, who ordered the attacks, declared in a speech to the nation hours after the bombing of Hiroshima. “If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
The last surviving member of the crew that flew over Hiroshima that day died in November. Before then, he recalled what he thought while aboard a B-29 named Necessary Evil as the bomb dropped from another warplane, the Enola Gay.
In a 2018 NPR interview, Gackenbach expressed no second thoughts about the annihilation of most of Hiroshima’s inhabitants.
“I do not regret what we did that day,” he said. “All war is hell. The Japanese started the war. It was our turn to finish it.”
But another witness to the 900-foot-wide fireball that heated the air above Hiroshima to 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit has made it her life’s mission to eliminate nuclear weapons.
“We atomic bomb survivors are greatly disturbed by the continued modernization of nuclear weapons by the United States and other countries, and your stated willingness to use these instruments of genocide,” 88-year-old Setsuko Thurlow wrote to President Trump in a letter published Monday in The Daily Hampshire Gazette. “Nuclear weapons are not a necessary evil, they are the ultimate evil. It is unacceptable for any state to possess them.”
Thurlow was a 13-year-old a mile from ground zero in Hiroshima the day the bomb fell there.
“Although that happened in the morning, it was already very dark, like twilight,” she told NPR’s Kelly McEvers in 2016. “I could see some dark moving object approaching to me. They happened to be human beings. They just didn’t look like human beings. I called them ghosts.”
“They were covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and the flesh was hanging from the bones,” the atomic blast survivor added. “Parts of their bodies were missing, and some were carrying their own eyeballs in their hands. And as they collapsed, their stomach burst open.”
Four years ago, President Barack Obama became the first American head of state to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial. He offered condolences, but pointedly did not offer apologies.
“The morning of August 6, 1945 must never fade,” Obama told a crowd gathered near the shell of the sole building left standing where the bomb exploded. “That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.”
Pope Francis took a more critical stance during a November visit to that same peace memorial in Hiroshima.
“Using nuclear power to wage war is today, more than ever, a crime,” the pontiff declared, adding it was immoral even to possess nuclear weapons.
Some prominent experts in the law of war are also reexamining the Hiroshima attack.
“There is no question that a dropping of a large nuclear weapon amongst the civilian population is a war crime,” says Harvard Law School professor Gabriella Blum. “Under the current laws of war, if you know you are going to impact civilians, you must provide warning and you must take precautions to avoid harming civilians to the extent possible. There is no doubt none of that was considered and none of that was seriously weighed in reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
In a similar critical vein, the cover story for the current issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is titled, “Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today.”
“We know that one of the main objectives was to cause as much civilian harm as possible, to create a shock among the civilians,” says Stanford law professor Allen Weiner, one of the cover story’s three authors.
“The bomb in Hiroshima was dropped quite far away from the edge of town where the factories and worker housing was located,” Weiner notes, “and one of the great ironies is that those factories and worker housing that were [cited by U.S. officials] in selecting Hiroshima as a target survived the atomic bombing. They were not destroyed.”
But Weiner also points out that in 1945 no nations had signed a treaty barring the kind of aerial bombardment of civilians that the U.S. carried out in Hiroshima.
“I’m prepared to really give a quite hardcore hedge and say that in 1945, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not clearly illegal,” says Weiner. “Today, it would clearly be illegal.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators have assured scientists that political pressure will not determine when a coronavirus vaccine is approved even as the White House hopes to have one ready ahead of the November presidential election, the country’s leading infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday.
“We have assurances, and I’ve discussed this with the regulatory authorities, that they promise that they are not going to let political considerations interfere with a regulatory decision,” Dr. Fauci told Reuters in an interview.
“We’ve spoken explicitly about that, because the subject obviously comes up, and the people in charge of the regulatory process assure us that safety and efficacy is going to be the prime consideration,” he said.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, is behind Democrat Joe Biden in public opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Trump has lost ground in part due to voter concerns over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
A vaccine announcement in October could help Trump’s chances in the nationwide vote.
“I’m certain of what the White House would like to see, but I haven’t seen any indication of pressure at this point to do anything different than what we’re doing,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“I mean obviously they’ve expressed: ‘Gee, it would be nice, the sooner the better.’”
Trump has suggested publicly that a vaccine could be ready long before the end of the year. In the interview Fauci offered a more conservative view, suggesting drugmakers will likely have tens of millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines in the early part of next year.
Fauci and other doctors on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, including its coordinator Deborah Birx, have come under criticism from the president for portraying the pandemic in less rosy terms than he has sought to emphasize.
Trump said in a recent interview with Axios that the virus was “under control.”
Asked if he shared that assessment, Fauci said some parts of the country were more under control than others.
“We’re a big country. You can pick out some parts of the country that are looking good and you could say is under control; you could pick some parts of the country that are on fire, in the sense, I mean you’re having outbreaks that you know you don’t get 70,000 cases a day when nothing’s going on.”
More than 157,000 people have died in the United States from COVID-19 and more than 4.7 million cases have been reported in the country and its territories, according to Reuters tallies.
Earlier this week the president criticized Dr. Birx for giving a sobering description of the state of the pandemic.
Fauci said the doctors try to focus on the science rather than political distractions.
“What we try to do, you know maybe some could do it better than others, is to focus like a laser on what we’re supposed to be doing: getting this epidemic under control,” he said.
Fauci said differences in the seriousness with which people had taken the virus in the United States had hampered the response to the pandemic in comparison to other countries.
“We have somewhat of a disjointed approach to things,” he said. “If we had a uniformity of it, and everybody rode together in the same boat, we probably would do much better.”
Fauci and other medical professionals have urged Americans to wear masks and maintain a social distance to prevent the spread of the virus. He lamented the fact that mask-wearing had become political earlier in the pandemic.
Trump declined to wear a mask in public for months and Vice President Mike Pence faced criticism for not wearing one when he visited the Mayo Clinic in April.
“Thank goodness that’s changed,” Fauci said. “I’m very pleased now that we’re seeing the vice president consistently wearing a mask, the president tweeting that you should be wearing masks. That’s a good thing. That’s a step in the right direction.”
This article is republished here with permission from The Associated Press. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
Facebook has deleted a post by President Donald Trump for the first time, saying it violated its policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post in question featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus.
Facebook said Wednesday that the “video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.”
A tweet from Trump with the same video remained up on Twitter as of Wednesday afternoon. That’s even though Twitter has been quicker than Facebook in recent months in labeling posts from the president that violate its policies against misinformation and abuse. Twitter did not have an immediate comment.
This is the first time that Facebook has removed a post from Trump entirely, rather than labeling it, as it has done in the past.
Several studies suggest, but don’t prove, that children are less likely to become infected than adults and more likely to have only mild symptoms. But this is not the same as being “virtually immune” to the virus.
A CDC study involving 2,500 children published in April found that about 1 in 5 infected children were hospitalized versus 1 in 3 adults; three children died. The study lacks complete data on all the cases, but it also suggests that many infected children have no symptoms, which could allow them to spread the virus to others.
WASHINGTON – American University Professor Allan Lichtman, who is well-known for accurately predicting American presidential elections, says former Vice President Joe Biden will beat President Donald Trump in the November election.
He uses a “13 key factors” system he designed to decide who will emerge victorious. It includes factors like the advantage of incumbency, long and short-term economic figures, scandals, social unrest, and more.
“The keys predict that Trump will lose the White House,” Lichtman stated Wednesday in a New York Times video op-ed.
Lichtman believes it will be a close election, predicting with his system that seven of the keys swing towards Biden, while six favor Trump.
According to Lichtman, Trump has an advantage with being the incumbent as well as not facing a serious primary challenger, nor a serious third party candidate. These are some things that hurt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, Lichtman predicted then, pointing to Gary Johnson’s third-party run and the fact she wasn’t an incumbent.
And just how the Democrats’ failures in the 2014 midterm elections may have impacted the nation contest in 2016, Lichtman predicts GOP losing the House of Representatives in 2018 could have the same negative effect for Trump.
The Republicans’ loss of the House not only gives Trump a zero in that category, but it also leads to losing another key: dealing with scandal, which includes his impeachment, “plus plenty of other scandals,” Lichtman states.
Lichtman also pointed to the massive social unrest erupting around the country through protests against racial injustice following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor as a factor to potentially help Biden.
“There has been enough social unrest on the streets with enough violence to threaten the social order,” Lichtman said.
The professor also swung both long and short-term economic impacts towards Biden following economic collapse due to the coronavirus, explaining, “The pandemic has caused such negative GDP growth in 2020 that the key has turned false” to helping Trump.
Lichtman also labeled both Biden and Trump as not having the advantage of being charismatic, deeming Biden the “uncharismatic challenger” while saying Trump is a “great showman, but only appeals to a narrow slice of the American people.”
The professor said Trump’s candidacy made 2016 “the most difficult election to assess” since beginning his predictions.
He also said “there are forces at play outside the keys” in 2020, including potential voter suppression and possible meddling from foreign countries, including Russia.
Lichtman claims to have accurately predicted the winner of every presidential contest since Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984. While he predicted former Vice President Al Gore would win the election in 2000, he stands by his projection, stating Gore won the popular vote while former President George W. Bush won the electoral college after the Supreme Court ruling.
Donald Trump has claimed children are “virtually immune” to the novel coronavirus while pushing for schools to reopen nationwide amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The president repeated his assertion that young people do not suffer severe symptoms associated with Covid-19 during a Wednesday morning interview on the network’s morning show, Fox & Friends. He also noted that older teachers “shouldn’t be going in” during the pandemic, or as he put it: “Until this thing goes by.”
It’s a talking point Mr Trump has used in several recent interviews while demanding schools open for in-person classes throughout the fall, even as many states across the country face a reemergence of the novel virus, which has already killed at least 155,000 Americans, according to daily tracking data.
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He previously said children were “virtually immune” on Tuesday night during an interview with Lou Hobbs, though he has not offered any evidence to back the assertion.
Meanwhile, growing evidence indicates young people do, in fact, suffer from severe cases of Covid-19, with some survivors reporting extensive complications that have lasted far longer than the typical two-week window in which many patients show signs of infection.
“You know, young people, they have better immune systems than we do, Lou, I hate to tell you this,” Mr Trump said. “They are in very good shape. Virtually, virtually immune from this disease.”
On Wednesday morning, the president also repeated false claims that his administration inherited “nothing” from that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, when it came to critical supplies to battle the pandemic, like ventilators. There were an estimated 19,000 ventilators in the national stockpile by the time Mr Trump took office.
He continued to put the claim about young people and the coronavirus throughout the interview, saying: “It doesn’t have an impact on them.”
“I’ve watched some doctors say they’re ‘totally immune,’ I don’t know I hate to use the word ‘totally,’ the news will say, ‘Oh, he made the word totally and he shouldn’t have used that word,’” the president added. “But the fact is they are virtually immune from this problem, and we have to open our schools.”
The comments come as many schools throughout the US announce reopening plans and prepare for students to return, with some already returning to classrooms beginning this month. Mr Trump also claimed the virus would simply disappear, as he has since the start of the pandemic, when discussing school reopening.
“My view is the schools should open,” he concluded. “This thing’s going way. it will go away like things go away, and my view is schools should reopen.”
Despite the signs of movement toward a deal, Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on aid for state and local governments, funding for schools, and assistance for food, rent and mortgage payments, among other topics. Schumer also suggested Wednesday that he would not accept an agreement without an extension of the $600 per week jobless benefit.
“At the moment, however, the White House is not [supporting $600 a week], and we are not going to strike a deal unless we extend the unemployment benefits which have kept nearly 12 million Americans out of poverty,” he said on the Senate floor.
Congress and the Trump administration have struggled to strike an aid agreement after the enhanced unemployment benefits and eviction moratorium expired in late July. Millions of Americans still unable to find work will now see a staggering drop in income until lawmakers can pass legislation.
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, Meadows said he has “become extremely doubtful that we’ll be able to make a deal if it goes well beyond Friday,” according to CNN.
It appears likely Congress will have to approve a bill with largely Democratic votes in both the GOP-controlled Senate and Democratic-held House. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., acknowledged Tuesday that his caucus has “divisions about what to do” to extend unemployment insurance.
The top Senate Republican also said he is “prepared to support” the deal Democrats and the White House strike, even if he has “problems with certain parts of it.”
Following reports of large parties that violate health orders aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Wednesday that he will authorize the city to shut off water and power services to residents who hold such gatherings.
Beginning Friday night, if Los Angeles Police Department officers respond to and verify that a large party is occurring at a property, and there’s evidence that the venue has repeatedly engaged in such behavior, the department will request that the city shut off water and power services within 48 hours.
Garcetti said that while all nightclubs and bars have already been closed, “these large house parties have essentially become nightclubs in the hills” and often happen at homes that are vacant or used for short-term rentals.
“The consequences of these large parties ripple far beyond just those parties,” he said. “They ripple throughout our entire community because the virus can quickly and easily spread.”
The issue of large, private gatherings received heightened scrutiny this week following a boisterous party Monday at a mansion on Mulholland Drive that ended in a fatal shooting.
About 200 people were at the party when police first entered about 7 p.m. after numerous complaints from neighbors about the size of the gathering.
Although officers cited and impounded some vehicles that were illegally parked, they did not break up the party — even though gatherings of any size are prohibited under Los Angeles County’s coronavirus health order.
A shooting was reported about 12:45 a.m. LAPD Lt. Chris Ramirez said officers found two women and a man suffering from gunshot wounds. All the victims were taken to hospitals in critical or grave condition, and a 35-year-old woman later died. The other two were stable, officials said.
Ramirez said the shooting is considered a gang-related homicide. Social media activity, in part, led detectives to tie the shooting to gang activity, he added.
L.A. Councilman David Ryu also introduced a motion Wednesday to increase penalties and provide additional enforcement options against property owners who defy city laws or building and safety rules, including the city’s 2018 party-house ordinance.
The party on Mulholland Drive was the latest in a string of big house parties during the pandemic. The county has also announced an investigation into a party thrown for “first responders” at a Hollywood bar on July 31 that violated social distancing requirements.
“Most checkpoints will be at roadways coming into the city after bridges and tunnels, not on Port Authority property themselves,” Ms. Feyer said.
State and city officials have been warning for weeks about a potential second wave of virus cases driven by travelers from the dozens of states where the outbreak has surged in recent weeks.
In late June, as cases began climbing around the country, New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, ordered people coming from states with a high percentage of positive coronavirus tests to quarantine for two weeks upon their arrival. As of Tuesday, travelers from 34 states and Puerto Rico are subject to the order.
From the day of its announcement, the measure was met with skepticism about how it could be enforced. Those who violate the quarantine can be subject to fines of up to $10,000 for subsequent violations, but state officials acknowledged that they would not be tracking every person who entered the state.
Though the state says all travelers should fill out the form, compliance has largely depended on the whims of the people entering the state. Those who entered New York using highways, train stations and buses had not been subject to the same level of scrutiny.
City officials said on Wednesday that the checkpoints will help them monitor potential new outbreaks. They had grown particularly concerned amid an uptick in cases in neighboring New Jersey and regional partners like Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Editor’s note: We will update this article daily to reflect Congress’ discussions and negotiations regarding the next federal stimulus package. Last update: August 5, 2020.
Time is running out for Congress to find common ground on what should be included in the second stimulus package.
The second stimulus proposal from the Senate Republicans, the Help, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS) Act, includes multiple smaller pieces of legislation. These components would provide another round of direct stimulus payments to Americans, extend unemployment benefits, freeze Medicare premiums, offer more Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding and extend liability shields for businesses facing COVID-19-related lawsuits.
The House released its own second stimulus proposal, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, in May. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the House proposal last week, calling it a “socialist manifesto.” Congress will negotiate over the measures before voting on a bill and potentially sending it to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.
When Could the Second Stimulus Happen?
While there’s no deadline for Congress to pass a second stimulus bill, there are just days left until Congress is supposed to adjourn for a month-long recess on Aug. 7.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has indicated that House members will be called back to Washington, D.C. during recess if a deal is made. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has not indicated what will happen during their recess if a deal isn’t made before then.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows will continue to meet with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi multiple times this week to negotiate details of the final package.
Here’s what we know so far.
Another Round of Stimulus Checks
The Republicans are floating two proposals for the next round of stimulus checks.
The American Workers, Families And Employers Assistance Act includes another round of one-time payments, commonly referred to as stimulus checks. It proposes the same $1,200 payment as the CARES Act—identical to what Democrats have called for in the HEROES Act—including the same income threshold. However, the HEALS Act proposes a $500-per-dependent payment to taxpayers with dependents of any age, not just those who are under 17, which the CARES Act mandated.
The CARES Act provided one-time payments of $1,200 to individuals who made up to $75,000 per year, and $2,400 to married couples who filed jointly and made up to $150,000 per year, with an additional $500 per qualifying dependent. Those who had incomes higher than those thresholds fell into a “phase out” range. Single taxpayers with incomes above $99,000 and married couples with incomes above $198,000 did not receive a payment.
A new proposal, introduced on July 30 by a handful of GOP senators including Marco Rubio (Fla.), would provide both adults and dependents with $1,000 payments.
These Republican stimulus check proposals are an about-face from what the GOP had been discussing previously. Republicans earlier called for the next round of payments to target lower-income individuals who make $40,000 or less annually.
Weekly Unemployment Benefit Could Be Reduced
The second stimulus package likely will extend Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), which was included in the CARES Act, but the final payments went out last weekend. This federally funded unemployment aid provided an additional $600 per week on top of state-funded unemployment benefits.
The HEALS Act would provide $200 weekly unemployment supplemental payments through September. Starting in October, the boost would be replaced with a payment that, when combined with state unemployment insurance payments, equals 70% of an individual’s lost wages. That means beginning in October, payments would be unique based on each individual’s previous earnings.
This could prove difficult to implement quickly. The National Association of State Workforce Agencies says it would take up to 20 weeks for most states to implement the Republican proposal for wage replacement, blaming aging computer systems and already-overwhelmed unemployment offices, according to an association memo. The HEALS Act would provide $2 billion to assist states in upgrading their unemployment insurance systems to better prepare for the changes mandated by the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week described the GOP’s proposal for the new calculation of unemployment benefits as a “nightmare.”
The lowered FPUC comes after weeks of debate in Washington, D.C., about how helpful—or unhelpful—the unemployment boost has been for Americans. GOP lawmakers long argued that the boost gives Americans little incentive to return to work, since many were making the same amount or more on unemployment with the boost than they did before losing their jobs.
A group of Republican senators introduced another proposal for unemployment benefits on Wednesday. The new proposal would provide $400-$500 in federal unemployment benefits per week on top of regular state benefits from August to September. In October, recipients would get 80% of their prior wages; if a state can’t provide that 80% on its own, federal benefits of up to $300 per week will be provided.
Democrats and prominent economists support an extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits, maintaining it would keep the economy afloat and protect out-of-work Americans, while cutting it off would result in “human and economic catastrophe.” Democrats have called for the $600 weekly federal benefit to be extended in full.
More Paycheck Protection Program Funding
More funding will likely be available for the Paycheck Protection Program. The program provides loans to businesses with fewer than 500 employees and has already gone through two funding rounds in Congress totaling $650 billion.
The Republican proposal for more PPP funding is included in a piece of legislation titled the Continuing Small Business Recovery and Paycheck Protection Program Act. The act would allow small businesses to receive a second PPP loan if they can demonstrate they’ve lost at least 50% in gross revenue, and would also create a $60 billion long-term recovery loan program that targets low-income communities, minority-owned and seasonal businesses.
The USPS, which is suffering from extreme financial distress and is rated “at-risk” by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), requested $75 billion in funding in April after telling members of Congress it would run out of money by September.
The CARES Act granted the USPS a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Treasury to use if it can’t cover operating expenses during the coronavirus pandemic. But Democrats are pushing to provide the agency with more money—the HEROES Act includes a $25 billion grant to the Postal Service. Republicans argue the $10 billion should already be enough.
As the November election approaches, more states are exploring the possibility of mail-in voting due to the pandemic. The Postal Service is already facing mail delays due to cost-cutting efforts, and voting advocates worry that could continue into the election if federal intervention doesn’t happen.
School Funding
McConnell said last week the GOP proposal will include additional funding for schools, with some of those funds reserved for schools that physically reopen. He previously stated that $105 billion would be allocated for schools, but until Republicans release the bill’s text, that number cannot be confirmed.
“This majority is preparing legislation that will send $105 billion so that educators have the resources they need to safely reopen,” McConnell said. “That is more money than the House Democrats set aside for a similar fund, by the way. And that’s in addition to support for child care needs.”
Child Care Support
The HEALS Act would include $15 billion to support child care services through grants and new programs.
The plan, introduced by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Service, Education and Related Agencies would allocate $10 billion to create “back to work child-care grants” to help providers pay for costs and operating expenses while re-enrolling children during the pandemic. An additional $5 billion would be allocated to the Child Care and Development Block Grant so child-care providers at risk of closing due to the pandemic can apply for emergency assistance as a lifeline to remain open as parents return to work.
Liability Shield for Businesses
In a separate Republican proposal titled the SAFE TO WORK Act, businesses and other entities would be protected from lawsuits tied to coronavirus infections. That includes businesses, schools, hospitals, churches nonprofits, universities and government agencies. Entities would be shielded from coronavirus-related liability, unless they engaged in gross negligence, consciously engaging in reckless disregard for the safety of their customers and employees.
Liability protection has been a top priority for Republicans, especially McConnell.
“[The next stimulus package] must have, must, no bill will pass the Senate without liability protection for everyone related to the coronavirus,” McConnell said during a recent stop in Kentucky, as reported by The Hill. “Nobody should have to face an epidemic of lawsuits on the heels of the pandemic that we already have related to the coronavirus.”
The White House previously said the liability protection provisions were “non-negotiable” in the next stimulus package, but appears to have reversed its stance. According to the Washington Post, the administration would consider signing a deal that didn’t include liability protections.
Democrats have strongly objected to the liability protection proposal, arguing that it would allow businesses to put employees in danger without any legal consequences.
Medicare Premiums Frozen
The HEALS Act would freeze Part B premiums and deductibles, preventing them from spiking as a result from economic conditions related to the COVID-19 crisis. The 2021 Part B monthly premium would remain $144.90, the standard premium, for 2021.
Health Funding
Multiple pieces of legislation in the HEALS Act would provide billions in funding for testing, vaccines, COVID-19 research and disease tracking. Health funding is included in various Republican proposals, making it unclear what the final package might look like.
Business Meal Tax Deduction
The “Supporting America’s Restaurant Workers Act,” introduced by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), would increase tax deductions for business meals from its current 50% allocation to 100%.
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