The emergency provisions of the CARES Act – giving Americans an extra unemployment benefit $600 per week and a moratorium on evictions – expire next week. The Democrats in the House have passed the HEROES Act back in May, providing six more months of COVID-19 unemployment, housing and food assistance, debt relief, student loan forgiveness, hazard pay, and nearly $1 trillion in aid for state and local governments.
This legislation remains with the pile of House bills gathering dust on Mitch “The Grim Reaper” McConnell’s desk.
The GOP has been in negotiations among themselves to come up with a Senate bill that would provide less generous benefits to the American people who are still suffering from the raging pandemic – but they cannot come to consensus (and they have yet to talk to Democratic Senators they need to pass the 60-vote threshhold). Time is of the essence: they are due for yet another five-week recess on July 31. And this week, unemployment claims surged again, as many parts of the country are on the brink of a second closing due to the pandemic.
MOMocrats Karoli, Aliza Worthington, and Donna Schwartz Mills discuss this and the crazy quilt of this week’s other developments in the weekly podcast from a progressive point of view – part of the DemCast family of podcasts.
