Looks good on the surface, but don't scratch too deep

US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders partly restoring enhanced unemployment payments to the tens of millions of Americans who lost jobs in the coronavirus pandemic, as the United States marked a grim milestone of five million cases.

[...]

Trump said on Saturday that the orders would provide an extra $400 per week in unemployment payments, less than the $600 per week passed earlier in the crisis. Some of the measures were likely to face legal challenges, as the US Constitution gives Congress authority over federal spending.

  alJazeera

Aside from the legal issue, four hundred a week is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Otherwise, it's not great. More about that in a bit.

"This is the money they need, this is the money they want, this gives them an incentive to go back to work," the Republican president said of the lower payments. He said 25 percent of it would be paid by states, whose budgets have been hard hit by the crisis.

I don't see how that's an incentive to go back to work. And states should be GETTING monetary assistance, not paying it out.

"Donald Trump is trying to distract from his failure to extend the $600 federal boost for 30 million unemployed workers by issuing illegal executive orders," said Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.

"This scheme is a classic Donald Trump con: playacting at leadership while robbing people of the support they desperately need."

And I have no doubt he was aided in this by the GOP/Mitch McConnell. I am willing to bet they cooked this up between them as a scheme to boost his election prospects. Senate Republicans would refuse to negotiate so Trump could waltz in as a savior.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called the orders a "series of half-baked measures" and accused Trump of putting Social Security "at grave risk" by delaying the collection of payroll taxes that pay for the programme.

Trump also said he was suspending collection of payroll taxes, which pay for Social Security and other federal programmes, an idea that he has repeatedly raised but has been rejected by both parties in Congress.

That's the "more" I was talking about. Rather than give people the financial support they need up front, this deal takes money from both Social Security and Medicare. It's intentional. The federal government would be spending the same amount of money either way, but this way, they can strike a blow against the social safety net they're always angling to destroy. It also does nothing for those 30 million people who no longer have a job and thus, no paycheck from which to withhold taxes.

His orders would also stop evictions from rental housing that has federal financial backing and extend zero percent interest on federally financed student loans.

Ah! Actually doing something legal and useful.*

The news of Trump's decision comes as the country's coronavirus cases surpassed five million, according to a Reuters News Agency tally. The US has also recorded more than 162,000 deaths, the highest in the world.

A spectacularly horrific failure of Trump and Trumpland.

UPDATE:

As people keep saying, there's ALWAYS a self-owning tweet...

UPDATE:

*UPDATE:  The FINE print.

Bastards.

Also...




Defer it?  They have to pay it back?  When?  When they land a job that pays six figures????