Pelosi readies a smaller House coronavirus relief bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing a roughly $2.4 trillion revised coronavirus relief package . The details remain uncertain but Pelosi could bring it to the House floor as soon as next week if talks with the White House remain stalled. The measure is an effort to bridge the nearly $1 trillion gap between competing proposals. The House passed a nearly $3.5 trillion bill in May but Senate GOP leaders have set a ceiling of $1.1 trillion though they have not been able to get any bill passed through their chamber.
Mnuchin and Pelosi agree to re-start coronavirus relief talks. Even as Pelosi is preparing her own slimmed-down bill, she and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin say they are ready to reopen talks that have been stalled for months. One incentive: New jobless claims seem stuck at nearly 900,000-a-week. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to push for another bill. He said the last relief package “did a lot of good in putting money in people's hands and keeping them in their homes and keeping them spending, keeping them in one piece. Going forward, more of that may be needed” to avoid deep national economic devastation.
About the continuing resolution. The Senate hoped to pass a stop-gap money bill yesterday, but it now looks like a vote won’t occur until early next week, just before the Sept. 30 deadline. The measure, passed by the House earlier this week, would fund the government until Dec. 11. It appears to have broad support but is tangled in procedural wrangling. It’s a Senate thing.
If the national debt grows to twice the size of our economy, will there be higher taxes? TPC’s Howard Gleckman considers the dismal fiscal future foreseen by the Congressional Budget Office. If more realistic assumptions prevail—like those analyzed by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—the debt would rise to 2.5 times the size of the economy. The US may be headed for a period of significantly higher taxes and reduced government spending.
Canada PM Trudeau wants to tax extreme wealth inequality. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants such a tax to fund childcare, housing, and healthcare. But his plan is short on details. Trudeau made a television address this week where he promised to raise revenue by finding “additional ways to tax extreme wealth inequality” including “tax avoidance by digital giants.”
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