It's been 132 days since the House passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, which Sen. Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. It has been two days since the House passed a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown in five days. The election is in 39 days.
The struggling economy—and some vulnerable House Democrats—have brought Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi back to the bargaining table on coronavirus relief, though Republicans are still in denial about the need for stimulus. They have to be; their king, Donald Trump, has deemed the coronavirus pandemic all but over and the economy just fine. Any deviation from that by a Republican will bring wrathful tweets down upon their head. But there's reality: The Dow has had four straight weekly losses and is down about 9% since the beginning of September.
That's brought Mnuchin, if no one else, to realize more money is needed. He told the Senate Banking Committee Thursday, “I do think we need comprehensive relief. […] I’m available any time,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also testified at that hearing. “We’ll see sooner or later, probably sooner, that the economy has a harder time sustaining the growth that we’ve seen,” Powell said. “That’s the risk.” He warned that people are going to start losing their homes and/or will start reducing spending to avoid that, because the stimulus from March's CARES Act is running out for most people, if not gone entirely. He pushed for renewed expanded unemployment insurance, particularly, as well as more assistance to small businesses.
So the House is back at it. At a House Democratic leadership meeting Thursday, Pelosi said that the new bill, borrowing from the HEROES Act that the House passed back in May, would be at about $2.4 trillion, a trillion down from the previous bill. As of now, it looks like it will include assistance specifically for restaurants and for the airlines. Payroll support to airlines ends with the end of this month—even Republicans have been pushing for that funding, making one point of agreement. Additionally, it is expected include another round of stimulus checks, the small business funding Republicans keep clamoring for, aid to state and local governments, rental assistance, election security and U.S. Postal Service funding, and the bumped up unemployment assistance. It's a lot of what was in the HEROES Act, but could possibly come in lesser amounts. For example, a group of economists has argued that $500 billion would be adequate aid for state and local governments, rather than the $915 billion in the HEROES Act. What's going to be harder to come to agreement on is the restored unemployment insurance boost at $600/week.
That boost actually helped lift people out of poverty and kept the economy going. With the expiration of that and other supports in the CARES Act, people are hurting, desperately. The Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey for the first two weeks of September found that 23 million adults—10.5% of all adults—said their household didn't have enough food. That's several times the rate before the coronavirus epidemic. The vast majority, 80% of people, said they “couldn't afford to by more food" as the reason for food insecurity as opposed to lack of transportation or limited access to food because of the fear of being exposed to the disease.
In addition, an estimated 25% of renters with children live in a household that's behind on the rent. The August Current Population Survey from the census found that 35 million people met the federal definition of bing "unemployed," or lived with an unemployed family member—that included 9 million children. Speaking of children, as much as 14% of adults with children reported that their kids haven't had enough to eat in the previous week, which means that the adults in the household really hadn't been eating enough. In the August survey, between 7 and 11 million children did not get enough to eat because the household couldn't afford food. The continuing resolution the House passed this week could help—it's got critical nutritional support funding including extending and expanding the school meals replacement benefits.
That's not nearly enough to answer the deepening need, and provide at least a bit of a buffer for the next round of coronavirus. Which is coming.