It's been 167 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, and 29 days since the House passed their compromise $2.2 trillion bill, both of which Sen. Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. It is five days until the election and there is no hope that any stimulus will happen before the end of November.
That's while people are going to jail in Arkansas for not being able to pay their rent. Thankfully, it's the only state in which landlords can file criminal charges against renters for nonpayment of rent, But the 119-year-old law is still being used, and women, Blacks, and low-income workers are disproportionately losing their homes and ending up with criminal records, making it even harder to find a new home. Since the coronavirus epidemic began, ProPublica reports, more than 200 new criminal cases have be filed and "least seven women were detained or sentenced to jail for not appearing in court." It gets worse. "Even a national moratorium on evictions didn't stop the practice: Since the Sept. 4 order issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 24 new cases have been filed."
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That's happening in Arkansas. Around the country, food insecurity is increasing again after having improved from March through May. It's deepening now that much of the CARES Act stimulus from March has ended. "Among those who said they or a spouse/partner lost a job, the food insecurity rate is nearly four in ten (37.1 percent), up from 33.6 percent in May and roughly the same level as in March/April (37.3 percent), the period just after the initial wave of job losses." Black and Latino families are again hurting the most. "In September, Hispanic/Latinx adults (30.5 percent) and Black adults (28.2 percent) reported food insecurity at rates roughly double that of white adults (14.7 percent); these gaps have been consistent across the data collection periods."
Now we're looking at weeks, if not months, before there's a chance at relief. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that it's still possible a massive bill can be done before the end of the year. It's not impossible—Dec. 15 is another looming deadline for the government, when the continuing resolution that is now temporarily funding the government expires. It's possible that deadline, that must-pass bill, is an opportunity for pushing through a huge national Christmas present of trillions of dollars in relief. Or Trump will be barricaded in the White House, fighting in the courts, and using whatever tool he has at hand to burn everything down. We'll see.
"I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday," Pelosi told reporters Thursday. "We want to have as clean a slate as possible going into January." It's not impossible. The Senate could look very different in the lame duck. There could be a lot of very scared Republicans up for reelection in 2022 who just watched a total rout of their numbers and know that they're going to have to try to secure a deal now because they'll have less clout next year. They could be perfectly willing to go along with McConnell's agenda of using November and December to jam more of Trump's nominees onto the federal bench.
Anyway, here's where they left off. Trump is saying: "We're going to do a very big package as soon as the election is over. […] Right after the election we're going to get it one way or the other, it will happen." Pelosi sent a letter to Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin detailing the areas in which Mnuchin and the administration have not provided answers: testing, tracing and treatment, state and local funding, schools, child care, earned income and child tax credits, unemployment insurance, and OSHA and liability. Which is an awful lot, and the most contentious issues for the duration of these weeks of negotiation. "Your responses are critical for our negotiations to continue," she wrote. "The President's words that 'after the election, we will get the best stimulus package you have ever seen' only have meaning if he can get Mitch McConnell to take his hand off the pause button and get Senate Republican Chairmen moving toward agreement with their House counterparts.
"The American people are suffering, and they want us to come to an agreement to save lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy as soon as possible," she stated. "In light of these challenges, I respectfully await your attention to these urgent matters." So does an entire nation.