The House has released the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, the next $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill, with a possible vote as soon as Friday. The Congressional Progressive Caucus leadership is requesting a postponement of the vote in order to have more time to delve into the 1,800+ page bill and because of concerns that some key progressive, worker-oriented provisions were excluded.
The bill has some very good and downright essential provisions, starting with a massive rebuke of the "blue state bailout" rhetoric from Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell: nearly $1 trillion in aid to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments to help offset revenue losses to do the pandemic shutdown and retrain public employees. It includes: $200 billion in hazard pay for the essential workers; a 15% increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits; another $75 billion for testing, contact tracing as well as free treatment for coronavirus; an extension of the $600 bump to weekly unemployment insurance payments through January; and $175 billion in new money for rent, mortgage, and utility payments. With new money for the Postal Service and for states to implement vote-by-mail for November's election, it's good. But it can be even better.
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It falls short in two key ways: it doesn't include the $2,000/monthly direct cash payments that were in discussion, instead repeating the one-time $1,200 payment that was provided in the previous CARES Act, up to $6,000 for families with children. It has some reforms to protect that payment from seizure by creditors and to make it easier for everyone to access, but it's still just a one-time check. It also retains the very problematic Paycheck Protection Program, the small business loan program that's been beset by so many problems. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal says, the formula of these loans and the boost to unemployment checks as opposed to direct cash payments and grants to business is "mass unemployment" as a "policy choice."
What makes more sense, in addition to monthly direct cash payments, is her Paycheck Guarantee Act, which helps struggling companies continue to pay workers during the crisis. It would cover 100% of wages for workers earning salaries up to $100,000 for at least three months, keep workers enrolled in employer-sponsored benefits, like health insurance, and encourage employers to rehire recently laid-off or furloughed workers by covering payroll retroactively to the start of the COVID-19 crisis. That means any small business could benefit, without having to worry about taking on more debt that will have eventually have to be paid if they don't meet the requirements of the loans.
In requesting the delayed vote, the CPC co-Chairs Mark Pocan (WI), Pramila Jayapal (WA) and CPC Deputy Whip Lloyd Doggett (TX) wrote that the "unprecedented crisis" the nation faces argues for the monthly direct payments and the Paycheck Guarantee Act. "Millions of businesses—including small and minority-owned businesses—are looking for certainty about how they’ll be able to avoid closing permanently without jeopardizing the lives of their workers by bringing them back before it is safe to do so," they wrote. "These concerns—from how we end mass unemployment and ensure access to health care during a pandemic to getting relief to all businesses and their workers—need to be addressed in this legislation at the scale necessary to fully respond to this crisis and deliver certainty to the American people," they added.
On balance, it's a good bill. In addition to the other measures that are genuinely helpful, it has a student loan forgiveness program, up to $10,000 which could be a hell of a lot more generous, but is at least there. It also repeals the $135 billion boost to millionaires that the Republican Senate shoved into the CARES Act. That provision allowed hedge fund and other wealthy business owners to retroactively claim business losses to 2018 to get refunds. That $135 billion in lost revenue over the next ten years was more than the CARES Act gave to safety net programs, to hospitals and public health, and nearly as much as went to states and cities.
The bill could be a lot better for helping workers and helping small businesses. There's a lot in it that continues to bailout big corporations and continues to subsidize private health insurance to the detriment of affordable coverage to the unemployed, who'd be better off financially covered by even a temporary expansion of Medicaid or Medicare.
Again, there's a great deal in the bill that's critical and the kind of big thinking Pelosi promised. But it falls short on those key promises of monthly direct cash assistance and payroll support grants that need to be included.