Stopgap spending bill will be revealed today, maybe. Congressional leaders and White House officials worked to finalize a continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded from October 1 into December. But they still were struggling over the expiration date of the stopgap measure, a Trump request for $30 billion more in farm aid, and a Democratic push for $2 billion in additional child nutrition money. Hill leaders still hope to win passage by the end of the week.
Will the coming Supreme Court battle affect the money bill and stimulus? With both sides gearing up for what promises to be an ugly, deeply partisan battle over a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, some observers are worrying about the fate of both the stop-gap spending bill and a COVID-19 relief bill. Negotiations over both measures require at last some measure of trust, a resource in increasingly short supply in Congress.
CBO: Previous coronavirus relief bills boosted the economy in 2020, will continue to help in 2021. In an analysis released Friday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that emergency COVID-19 relief bills passed in the spring added 4.7 percent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and will add 3.1 percent to GDP in 2021. Collectively, they “offset part of the deterioration in economic conditions brought about by the pandemic,” the report says. CBO finds that direct assistance to state and local governments and enhanced unemployment benefits had the greatest benefit for the economy.The Paycheck Protection Program had the lowest impact.
California expands access to its Earned Income Tax Credit. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1876 on Friday. The measure expands CalEITC and the Young Child Tax Credit to include income-eligible undocumented Californians. Now, CalEITC no longer requires an applicant using an Individual Tax Identification Number or ITIN, to have at least one child under the age of 6 to qualify. Ninety percent of those who will benefit are children of color and 90 percent are Latino.
What’s worked better with the ACA? Carrots more than sticks. The New York Times reports on new federal data and research that shows that the individual mandate was less essential to the Affordable Care Act than initially thought. Rather, notes Dr. Benjamin Sommers a physician and professor of health policy at Harvard: “The linchpin policies were those that made coverage more affordable, like expanding Medicaid or giving people large premium tax credits.”
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