As we reach the end of the year, it's down to the wire with COVID relief. Millions face poverty and eviction as negotiations drag on. We need help now - but McConnell continues to stall COVID aid, contingent on adding business liability immunity to prevent companies that expose their workers to the disease from suing.
As the negotiations continue, the situation is changing quickly, and Congress is planning to pass some relief by Friday in must-pass funding bills. So we need you to call your Members of Congress NOW and tell them: stop evictions in the COVID-19 relief bill, and don't allow business liability immunity!
Call your Members of Congress now.
Here's the situation. Pelosi and Schumer have accepted the $908 billion pandemic emergency-relief proposal from the Manchin-Collins "Problem Solver Caucus" as the basis for negotiations with McConnell/Trump. As of now, their plan is to add it to either the Omnibus appropriations bill or the Continuing Resolution, one of which has to be passed by midnight Friday December 11 to prevent a government shutdown.
To recap: House Democrats originally asked for $3.3 trillion (HEROES Act). McConnell stonewalled. Dems compromised down to 2.2 trillion. McConnell stonewalled. Now Democrats seem ready to accept less than a third of what they originally proposed as the minimum necessary to meet the crisis (sigh). And just as they promised with all the previous inadequate bills when they settled for whatever little pittance they could beg from the Republicans they promise (again) to fight for what we really need in the next bill after Biden takes office.
Sadly, it is what it is, and we have to accept something rather than achieve nothing because people are really dying and suffering and they are desperate - and we care about that, which Republicans clearly do not.
But it's not just about the money, there are also crucial policy issues involved. As of now, no one really knows what's actually in the "Problem Solver" proposal, rumor is that no one will see the language until next Monday. But there are at least two policy issues we have to demand that our MoC take a firm stand on:
-
Extension of the national CDC's health-emergency eviction moratorium which is scheduled to terminate at the end of this month and the FHFA's foreclosure moratorium which dies at the end of January. We need to tell our MoC that any relief bill must extend eviction and foreclosure moratoriums.
-
McConnell is demanding inclusion of blanket Covid-lawsuit immunity for businesses as the price of emergency relief. The immunity he is demanding makes it impossible to sue for damages even in cases of flagrant negligence, failure to obey public health orders, or refusing to provide basic safety provisions to prevent people from falling ill. It's done through legal language requiring that in order to sue you must conclusively prove that you didn't catch COVID anywhere else, which is impossible because you cannot prove a negative. This means that if a business cuts costs to jack up profits by flouting health guidelines and regulations, employees or customers who catch Covid cannot sue unless they can prove that they didn't contract the illness from their symptom-free school kids, the line at the grocery store, or from handling a FedEx package. We need our MoC to reject liability immunity language that provides get-out-of-jail-free cards for businesses that willfully and negligently put their customers and employees at risk.
Call your Members of Congress today and tell them: pass a bill that stops evictions, not business liability!
|
