Coronavirus outbreak

Subterms

    More stories

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Yes, some US small business owners actually support the $600 weekly benefit | Gene Marks

      by

      About 30 million unemployed Americans are now on tenterhooks waiting to see if the $600-a-week federal unemployment benefit created by the Cares Act will be renewed. As the political row over its efficacy and necessity continues, the House and the Senate remain far apart on a compromise.What shouldn’t be left out of the discussion is an unlikely, yet numerous, group of people who do support the added benefit: small business owners.The issue is complicated.Many I know in the business community have taken issue with the additional $600 federal payment. They complain that a great number of their workers – particularly hourly and part-timers – have avoided returning to the workplace because the benefit provides them with more compensation then they were getting at their job and merely incentivizes them to stop working.But some studies – like this one from a group of Yale University researchers – have found the opposite to be true. The study found “no evidence” that workers receiving the added federal unemployment benefit were disincentivized to work and that “people with more generously expanded benefits also resumed working at a similar or slightly quicker rate than others did”.However, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the study excluded part-time workers and other “short-termers” who make up the vast majority of employees that benefited the most from the federal bump. “A worker in Louisiana who made $2,400 from part-time jobs all of last year would collect $2,516 a month in jobless benefits today – $29 a week from the state plus the $600. An average worker who had made $17 per hour ($680 a week) in Ohio has been able to collect $940 each week with the federal boost.”The debate will continue.But many small business owners remain convinced the payments should continue. Why? Because it has provided a safety net for their employees during a time when their companies couldn’t pay wages due to the country’s self-inflicted economic collapse.“We want them to succeed, and we want to help them grow their careers, and we hope to continue to employ them well into the future,” Mark Frier, a restaurant owner in Vermont told NPR’s Marketplace. “Initially [the federal benefit] was a lifesaver.” Frier is just one of many business owners who have been unable to sustain employee wages – even with help from the paycheck protection program – and who are grateful that there’s an added federal benefit available to help them through these times.Julie Wineinger, the owner of Lulabelle’s Sweet Shop in Washington DC, has gone out of her way to assist her employees in applying for unemployment benefits. She has also run fundraisers – selling ice cream and other products – specifically to raise additional cash in order to help her staff through these difficult times. “Some of my employees are very young, some have to support families,” she told me in a podcast interview. “They didn’t ask for this and I’m going to do my best to do what I can for them.”One of the many benefits of working for a small business is that employees oftentimes develop close relationships with their employers. When bad things happen – a family illness, a financial problem, a global pandemic that causes an unprecedented economic downturn – many small business owners are as much concerned with their employees’ welfare as their own families. Because they are like family.But these same employees are also assets, which is why many small business owners I know are in favor of the additional federal unemployment benefit. Knowing that the benefit is there, they could furlough their staff and not terminate them. Without these checks, those employees who have worked for them for years and gained experience and knowledge of their businesses may be forced to move elsewhere or take other jobs in order to make ends meet. When that happens, small business owners like Wineinger and others lose good people and have to search and train replacements. That creates disruption and added costs.Maybe the added federal benefit does discourage some from going back to work, particularly part-timers and hourly workers. And it is true that many small businesses are finding this situation a frustrating obstacle towards rehiring and getting back to normal. But for many other small business owners, that additional $600 check every week has helped them retain and sustain their employees during an unprecedented national emergency until times – hopefully – get back to normal. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump signs order for coronavirus relief, with lower level of extra aid for jobless

      by

      Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would extend enhanced coronavirus unemployment benefits and employment taxes into next year with executive orders, but cut the level of some of the support.Speaking at his luxury golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump said he was taking action after Congress had failed to agree a deal, blaming “far left” Democrat demands in a campaign-style speech.Trump said he would use unspent funds from the Cares act to continue unemployment payments to millions of newly unemployed Americans at a rate of $400 per week – a $200 drop from the earlier $600 payment, defer payroll tax through the end of 2020, defer student loans and interest, and extend the federal eviction moratorium.Democrats, who are likely to challenge the orders in court, had been pushing for a resumption of the $600 extra aid, which ended on 31 July, saying it was a lifeline for those hit hardest by the economic crisis.“Congressional Democrats have stonewalled our efforts to extend this relief,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf club,” Trump said from a ballroom at the resort where club members, wearing masks, were invited to stand at the back.Trump said he’s also cut income and capital gains taxes, though he did not lay out specific proposals. He vowed to extend and make payroll cuts permanent “if I win in November.”The action to extend unemployment payments, cut payroll taxes, continue the suspension of tenant evictions and to ease the burden of student loan debt came in one executive order and three memoranda.Asked by a reporter why $400 instead of the previous $600, Trump responded: “This is the money they need, this is the money they want, this gives them a great incentive to go back to work.” He added: “There was a difficulty with the 600 number because it really was a disincentive.”Trump used the event to attack Democrats, accusing party leaders of attempting to freight emergency spending with voter ID reforms that would amount to an attempt to “steal the election”, stimulus checks for illegal aliens, and early prison release for felons.“What does this have to do with coronavirus? This is has nothing to do with what were talking about?” Democrats, Trump claimed, had been taken over by “the radical left so they can go to Portland and try and rip the place apart.”The announcement came one day after negotiations with congressional Democrats on a broad pandemic aid package collapsed with the two sides around $1tn apart in the amount of money they want to commit to extending support to millions faced with economic hardship as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.In comments to the New York Times published on Saturday before Trump’s announcement, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she’s been unwilling to bow to the administration’s demands for a stopgap solution. “We’re not doing short-term action, because if we do short-term action, they’re not going to do anything else, she said, adding: “This president is the biggest failure in our history.”At a hastily-arranged press conference on Friday, Trump had vowed not only to suspend payroll tax and extend unemployment benefits but to also defer student loan payments indefinitely and forgive interest, and extend a moratorium on tenant evictions.The impasse meant that the $600-a-week bonus pandemic jobless federal benefit, which expired at the end of July, would be lost and potentially lead to a sharp rise in poverty rates and homelessness.Trump had vowed to use his “authority as president to get Americans the relief they need” but constitutional law experts voiced doubt that executive power extends to spending money on relief efforts without congressional authorization, but Trump vowed to override any roadblock democrats attempted to erect.“If Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, I will act under my authority as president to get Americans the relief they need,” the president said before Saturday’s announcement.Democrats have complained that the White House had rejected their offer to cut their larger demand for coronavirus relief from $3tn to $2tn. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said he’d urged administration negotiators led by treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin to accept the offer.“Don’t say it’s your way or no way,” Schumer said, noting that the Republican offer “doesn’t cover opening of schools. It doesn’t cover testing. It doesn’t cover dealing with rental assistance. It doesn’t cover elections. It doesn’t cover so many things.”The republican package, they added, also failed to include an additional $1,200 direct payments to individuals, money for states to hold elections in November, or support for the beleagured US Postal Service, which democratic house speaker Nancy Pelosi said was “central to the life of our democracy” in an election year when many Americans will be voting by mail.Republicans countered that Democratic party leaders were overlooking the limitations of their position. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Doctors and medical students across the US push to register patients to vote

      by

      An emergency room doctor in Boston is assembling thousands of voter registration kits for distribution at hospitals and doctor’s offices.Later this month, students at Harvard and Yale’s medical schools are planning a contest to see which of the Ivy League rivals can register the most voters.And a medical student in Rhode Island has launched an effort to get emergency ballots into the hands of patients who find themselves unexpectedly in the hospital around election day.Amid the dual public health crises of Covid-19 and racism, some in the medical community are prescribing a somewhat nontraditional remedy: voting.Hospitals, doctors and healthcare institutions across the country this month are committing to efforts to engage Americans in the election process as part of Civic Health Month, a nationwide campaign that kicked off 1 August.Hospital networks in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin and elsewhere are among more than 60 institutions participating, along with thousands of individual physicians.Benjamin Ruxin, a Stanford University graduate student who heads the campaign, said the coronavirus pandemic underscores the importance of ensuring everyone can vote and help shape healthcare policy for the challenging times ahead.Voter registration rates are down almost 70% in some states this election cycle because the traditional ways of registering voters have been curtailed by the pandemic, including DMVs and in-person registration drives, he said. Vulnerable patients ‘have to be involved in politics’Alister Martin, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said he founded VotER to provide medical professionals voter registration resources after years of seeing patients struggling from the health consequences of poverty, drug addiction, homelessness and other social ills.“We’ve been trained to solve these really complex health problems, but not everything we see can be treated with a prescription,” he said. “The healthcare system does not work for vulnerable people – full stop. We have to help them get involved in the political process if we hope to change any of this.”The sheer number of organizations and the range of efforts being proposed during the monthlong campaign shows that the medical community is increasingly shedding its reticence at civic engagement, said Kelly Wong, a medical student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. More