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Deal Reached on Biggest Economic Relief Package in U.S. History
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The White House and Senate leaders from both parties reached a deal on a $2 trillion emergency stimulus measure (NYT) in response to the coronavirus. The legislation is the largest economic relief package in modern U.S. history.
The deal, which still faces a Senate vote today, includes direct payments (WaPo) to many Americans, expanded unemployment insurance, $367 billion in loans for small businesses, and a $500 billion lending fund for industries, cities, and states. Negotiations were delayed by calls for more oversight on the loans, to which White House officials reportedly agreed. A World Health Organization spokesperson said that the United States, with over 55,000 reported coronavirus cases, could become the new epicenter (Guardian) of the pandemic.
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“The main (perhaps even the sole) objective of economic policy today should be to prevent social breakdown. Advanced societies must not allow economics, particularly the fortunes of financial markets, to blind them to the fact that the most important role economic policy can play now is to keep social bonds strong under this extraordinary pressure,” Branko Milanovic writes for Foreign Affairs.
“If workers don’t have wages, they can’t pay their bills. They’ll be buying food [with stimulus money], but their balance sheet is still going to be ruined. The answer is we need no evictions, no foreclosures on all properties, and the government should guarantee pay,” Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz told Foreign Policy.
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