Another Republican President, Another Recession.
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hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-business-c5e6ce9620ad98687cabb678121042a3
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans reached a deal with Democrats on Wednesday over major outstanding issues in a $1 trillion infrastructure package, ready to begin consideration of a key part of President Joe Biden’s agenda. An evening test vote was possible.
Lead GOP negotiator Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio made the announcement at the Capitol, flanked by four other Republican senators who have been in talks with Democrats and the White House on the bipartisan package.
“We now have an agreement on the major issues,” Portman said. “We are prepared to move forward.”
Asked about the agreement during a tour of a truck plant in Pennsylvania, Biden expressed approval.
“I feel confident about it,” he said.
For days, senators and the White House have worked to salvage the bipartisan deal, a key part of Biden’s agenda.
The outcome will set the stage for the next debate over Biden’s much more ambitious $3.5 trillion spending package, a strictly partisan pursuit of far-reaching programs and services including child care, tax breaks and health care that touch almost every corner of American life, and that Republicans strongly oppose.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the Senate on Wednesday announcing a possible test vote on the bipartisan package in the evening. It will require 60 votes in the evenly split 50-50 Senate to proceed to consideration, meaning support from both parties. That would launch a potentially long process to consider the bill, and any possible amendments.
Republican senators met Wednesday morning with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who appears to have given his nod to proceed. Portman said McConnell “all along has been encouraging our efforts.”
Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona, a lead Democratic negotiator, said she expected the package would have enough support to move forward.
Sinema said she spoke with Biden Wednesday and he was “very excited” to have an agreement.
Democrats, who have slim control of the House and Senate, face a timeline to act on what would be some of the most substantial pieces of legislation in years.
The bipartisan package includes about $600 billion in new spending on highways, bridges, transit, broadband, water systems and other public works projects.
Filling in the details has become a month-long exercise ever since the senators struck an agreement with Biden more than a month ago over the broad framework. There remains work to do as they draft the legislative text.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who has been central to talks, said, “That doesn’t mean every ‘t’ is crossed, every ‘i’ dotted, but on the major issues we are there.”
Republican senators sparred at their closed-door lunch Tuesday, one side arguing against doing anything that would smooth the way for the Democrats’ broader bill, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. Others spoke in favor of the bipartisan package.
A recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC found 8 in 10 Americans favor some increased infrastructure spending.
House Democrats have their own transportation bill, which includes much more spending to address rail transit, electric vehicles and other strategies to counter climate change.
At a private meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, called the Senate’s bipartisan measure complete “crap,” according to two Democrats who attended the session and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe it.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not commit to supporting the bipartisan package until she sees the details, but said Wednesday she’s “rooting for it.”
Pelosi said, “I very much want it to pass.”
Senators in the bipartisan group have been huddling privately for weeks. The group includes 10 core negotiators, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, but has swelled at times to 22.
Transit funding has remained a stubborn dispute, as Republican senators are wary of formalizing what has been a typical formula for the Highway Trust Fund allotting around 80% for highways and 20% for transit.
Most Republican senators come from rural states where highways dominate and public transit is scarce, while Democrats view transit as a priority for cities and a key to easing congesting and fighting climate change. Democrats don’t want to see the formula dip below its typical threshold.
Expanding access to broadband. which has become ever more vital for households during the coronavirus pandemic, sparked a new debate. Republicans pushed back against imposing regulations on internet service providers in a program that helps low-income people pay for service.
Sinema said transit and broadband were the remaining issues being finished up Wednesday.
Democrats also have been insisting on a prevailing-wage requirement, not just for existing public works programs but also for building new roads, bridges, broadband and other infrastructure, but it’s not clear that will make the final package.
Still unclear is how to pay for the bipartisan package after Democrats rejected a plan to bring in funds by hiking the gas tax drivers pay at the pump and Republicans dashed a plan to boost the IRS to go after tax scofflaws.
Funding could come from repurposing COVID relief aid, reversing a Trump-era pharmaceutical rebate and other streams. It’s possible the final deal could run into political trouble if it doesn’t pass muster as fully paid for when the Congressional Budget Office assesses the details.
Portman said the package will be “more than paid for.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are readying the broader $3.5 trillion package that is being considered under budget rules that allow passage with 51 senators in the split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break a tie. It would be paid for by increasing the corporate tax rate and the tax rate on Americans earning more than $400,000 a year.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-bills-24beb9c16ba6ca65d021fc3b2424578f
Biden welcomed the accord as one that would show America can “do big things.” It includes the most significant long-term investments in nearly a century, he said, on par with building the transcontinental railroad or the Interstate highway system.
“This deal signals to the world that our democracy can function,” Biden said ahead of the vote Wednesday night. “We will once again transform America and propel us into the future.”
After weeks of stop-and-go negotiations, the rare bipartisan showing on a 67-32 vote to start formal Senate consideration showed the high interest among senators in the infrastructure package. But it’s unclear if enough Republicans will eventually join Democrats to support final passage.
Senate rules require 60 votes in the evenly split 50-50 chamber to proceed for consideration and ultimately pass this bill, meaning support from both parties.
The outcome will set the stage for the next debate over Biden’s much more ambitious $3.5 trillion spending package, a strictly partisan pursuit of far-reaching programs and services including child care, tax breaks and health care that touch almost every corner of American life. Republicans strongly oppose that bill, which would require a simple majority, and may try to stop both.
Lead GOP negotiator Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio announced the bipartisan group’s agreement on the $1 trillion package earlier Wednesday at the Capitol, flanked by four other Republican senators who had been in talks with Democrats and the White House.
After voting, Portman said the outcome showed that bipartisanship in Washington can work and he believed GOP support would only grow. “That’s pretty darn good for a start,” he said.
That group had labored with the White House to salvage the deal, a first part of Biden’s big infrastructure agenda. Swelling to more than 700 pages, the bill includes $550 billion in new spending for public works projects.
In all, 17 Republican senators joined the Democrats in voting to launch the debate, but most remained skeptical. The GOP senators were given a thick binder of briefing materials during a private lunch, but they asked many questions and wanted more details.
According to a 57-page GOP summary obtained by The Associated Press, the five-year spending package would be paid for by tapping $205 billion in unspent COVID-19 relief aid and $53 billion in unemployment insurance aid some states have halted. It also relies on economic growth to bring in $56 billion, and other measures.
Giving Wednesday night’s vote a boost, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell announced late in the day he would vote to proceed, though whether he will support the final bill remains uncertain. The Republican negotiators met with McConnell earlier Wednesday and Portman said the leader “all along has been encouraging our efforts.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a lead Democratic negotiator who talks often with Republicans also spoke with Biden on Wednesday and said the she hoped the results showed “our government can work.”
Democrats, who have slim control of the House and Senate, face a timeline to act on what would be some of the most substantial pieces of legislation in years.
Filling in the details has become a month-long exercise ever since a bipartisan group of senators struck an agreement with Biden in June over the broad framework.
The new spending in the package dropped from about $600 billion to $550 billion, senators said, as money was eliminated for a public-private infrastructure bank and was reduced in other categories, including transit.
The package still includes $110 billion for highways, $65 billion for broadband and $73 billion to modernize the nation’s electric grid, according a White House fact sheet.
Additionally, there’s $25 billion for airports, $55 billion for waterworks and more than $50 billion to bolster infrastructure against cyberattacks and climate change. There’s also $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations.
Paying for the package has been a slog throughout the talks after Democrats rejected a plan to bring in funds by hiking the gas tax drivers pay at the pump and Republicans dashed an effort to boost the IRS to go after tax scofflaws.
Along with repurposing the COVID-19 relief and unemployment aid, other revenue would come from the sale of broadcast spectrum, reinstating fees that chemical companies used to pay for cleaning up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites and drawing $49 billion from reversing a Trump-era pharmaceutical rebate, among other sources.
The final deal could run into political trouble if it doesn’t pass muster as fully paid for when the Congressional Budget Office assesses the details. But Portman said the package will be “more than paid for.”
House Democrats have their own transportation bill, which includes much more spending to address rail transit, electric vehicles and other strategies to counter climate change.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not commit to supporting the package until she sees the details, but said Wednesday she’s “rooting for it.”
Pelosi said, “I very much want it to pass.”
A recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC found 8 in 10 Americans favor some increased infrastructure spending.
Senators in the bipartisan group have been huddling privately for months. The group includes 10 core negotiators, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, but has swelled at times to 22.
Transit funding has remained a stubborn dispute, as most Republican senators come from rural states where highways dominate and public transit is scarce, while Democrats view transit as a priority for cities and a key to easing congesting and fighting climate change.
Expanding access to broadband. which has become ever more vital for households during the coronavirus pandemic, sparked a new debate. Republicans pushed back against imposing regulations on internet service providers in a program that helps low-income people pay for service.
Meanwhile, Democrats are readying the broader $3.5 trillion package that is being considered under budget rules that allow passage with 51 senators in the split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break a tie. It would be paid for by increasing the corporate tax rate and the tax rate on Americans earning more than $400,000 a year.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Let the worst game of musical chairs ever commence.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-eviction-moratorium-coronavirus-da0e4cc8014b6c8a658dd1572707364f
https://apnews.com/article/biden-eviction-moratorium-coronavirus-da0e4cc8014b6c8a658dd1572707364f
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-9aa874d709064440b806f9352215a3f2
NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Christina Darling finally replaced her 2006 Chevrolet Equinox after it broke down several times while picking her children up from day care. But the 31-year-old mother of two was struggling to keep up with the car payments.
Brianne Walker desperately wanted to take her three children and two siblings camping for the first time but wasn’t sure how she could pay for it. After all, she was behind on her rent, and day care and grocery costs were adding up.
Then, the two women from New Hampshire got a surprise in their bank accounts this month. They qualified for the expanded child tax credit, part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Families on average are getting $423 this month; the Treasury Department estimates that 35.2 million families received payments in July.
“The additional money does help alleviate the pressure,” said Walker, 29, who took custody of her two siblings last year after her mother overdosed. The $800 credit will help make up for losses she incurred after quitting a kitchen design job to care for the five youngsters, ages 3 to 19.
Biden increased the amounts going to families and expanded it to include those whose income is so little they don’t owe taxes. The benefits begin to phase out at incomes of $75,000 for individuals, $112,500 for heads of household and $150,000 for married couples. Families with incomes up to $200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples can still receive the previous $2,000 credit.
In the past, eligible families got a credit after filing their taxes — either as a lump sum payment or a credit against taxes owed. But now six months of payments are being advanced monthly through the end of the year. A recipient receives the second half when they file their taxes. The credit is $3,600 annually for children under age 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. Eligible families will receive $300 monthly for each child under 6 and $250 per older child.
Advocates argue the monthly payments make more sense for low-income families.
“One of the problems with the big check in a year, if your car broke six months before, that is a long time to wait,” said Michael Reinke, executive director of the Nashua Soup Kitchen & Shelter, which serves many families making less than $26,000 a year.
“When people have money over a consistent period of time, it’s easier to make sure it’s going to the expenses you really need,” he said. “Sometimes, if you get it all at once, it’s hard to budget.”
Robin McKinney, co-founder and CEO of the CASH Campaign of Maryland, a Baltimore nonprofit organization that helps low-income residents file taxes, said the credit is providing people money in their pockets now, when they need it most.
“We know right now that peoples’ hours are down or they’re still struggling to get back to the same level of income that they had before, and this will create some stability for those families to know that over the next six months that they’re going to be getting this payment,” McKinney said.
If all the money goes out, the expectation is that could significantly reduce poverty — with one study estimating it could cut child poverty by 45%. And it comes at a time when unemployment benefits are being phased out and the federal eviction moratorium is set to expire Saturday.
The payments are also a test case of sorts. Biden ultimately would like to make them permanent — and the impact they have could go a long way to shaping that debate later this year.
“It infuses money into the family home,” said Suzanne Torregano, director of Family Services at Kingsley House in New Orleans, who estimated that 85%-90% of the parents the group serves are getting the monthly payments.
Still, some advocates argue the money may never reach the neediest because their incomes are so low they aren’t required to file a tax return, they don’t have a fixed address or bank account, or don’t have the internet savvy to apply.
“What we are finding is that homeless families … while many of them are eligible for the tax credit, they have significant barriers to obtaining it,” said Larry Seamans, president of FamilyAid Boston, which serves 900 families daily.
“We have some counter-intuitive struggles of families who may be unfamiliar with tax forms, tax laws and the fact that by filing a tax return, you can actually get money to support your family,” Seamans said.
“Many families ... are not on the tax rolls. They now have to find sufficient documentation to prove that they are eligible.”
Families who do receive the credit are mostly spending it on rent, child care and groceries, as well as catching up on cellphone and other bills. For Darling, the $550 she gets will go to car payments, more fresh produce and a babysitter so she can attend Nashua Board of Education meetings. She is running for a seat on the board. Eventually, she hopes to put money aside to save for a home with a yard.
“Every step closer we get to a livable wage is beneficial. That is money that gets turned around and spent on the betterment of my kids and myself,” said Darling, a housing resource coordinator who had been supplementing her $35,000-a-year salary with monthly visits to the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter’s food pantry.
McKinney, who is married with a 5-year-old son and qualifies for the tax credit, is getting $167 a month. She said it’s all going to help pay for child care, which costs $288 a week.
“Right now, it’s out-of-school time because it’s the summer, so people have to pay for camps and babysitting support so that the parents can go to work,” said McKinney, of Columbia, Maryland. “I know a lot of people who are like: ‘This money is coming at just the right time, because this summer is more expensive for me for child care.’”
Many families in higher-income brackets who receive less money are socking it away for things like a family trip, school supplies or Christmas gifts.
Carleigh Steele, who received several hundred dollars, said the money is giving her peace of mind a month after she moved into a house in Baltimore with the help of Habitat for Humanity.
“It’s sitting in my bank account for all the home-buying things that I need, and for the rainy day fund for my house — just to make sure that I can keep myself economically stable,” said Steele, who has a 6-year-old daughter.
Brianne Epps, a mother of four from Jackson, Mississippi, is using the money to pay bills but also to finance her dream of opening a soul food catering business. “It will help me, for one, to promote my catering business — to get that off the ground,” she said.
Molly Vigeant, of East Hartford, Connecticut, a 25-year-old single mother who works as a special needs paraprofessional in a high school, hopes to spend the money to repair or replace her car. But she’s had trouble accessing a portal aimed at helping applicants and hasn’t yet received anything.
“It doesn’t hurt yet,” she said of the delayed payment. “But, it’s a 20-year-old car with over 200,000 miles on it and I make 20 grand a year. A new one is not going to fall from the sky, when your debt-to-income ratio is garbage and you know you can’t finance a car.”
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-us-supreme-court-3065b165b8110c4238c698af8bcb8a42
WASHINGTON (AP) — A nationwide eviction moratoriumis set to expire Saturday night after President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress worked furiously but ultimately failed to align on a long-shot strategy to prevent millions of Americans from being forced from their homes during a COVID-19 surge.
More than 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some in a matter of days, as nearly $47 billion in federal housing aid to the states during the pandemic has been slow to make it into the hands of renters and landlords owed payments. The moratorium expires at midnight.
Tensions mounted late Friday as it became clear there was no resolution in sight. Hours before the ban was set to expire, Biden called on local governments to “take all possible steps” to immediately disburse the funds. Evictions could begin as soon as Monday.
“There can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants that have been hurt during this pandemic,” Biden said in a statement.
“Every state and local government must get these funds out to ensure we prevent every eviction we can,” he said.
The stunning outcome, as the White House and Congress each expected the other to act, exposed a rare divide between the president and his allies on Capitol Hill — one that could have lasting impact as the nation’s renters face widespread evictions.
Biden set off the scramble by announcing he would allow the eviction ban to expire instead of challenging a recent Supreme Court ruling signaling this would be the last deadline. He called on Congress on Thursday to swiftly pass legislation to extend the date.
Racing to respond Friday, Democrats strained to rally the votes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored colleagues to pass legislation extending the deadline, calling it a “moral imperative,” to protect renters and also the landlords who are owed compensation.
Congress must “meet the needs of the American people: both the families unable to make rent and those to whom the rent is to be paid,” she said in an overnight letter late Thursday.
But after hours of behind-the-scenes wrangling throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers had questions and could not muster support to extend the ban even a few months. House Republicans objected to an attempt to simply approve an extension by consent, without a formal vote. The Senate may try again Saturday.
Democratic lawmakers were livid at the prospect of evictions in the middle of a surging pandemic.
“Housing is a primary social indicator of health, in and of itself, even absent COVID,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “A mass eviction in the United States does represent a public health crisis unto itself.”
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the Financial Services Committee chair who wrote the emergency bill, said House leaders should have held the vote, even if it failed, to show Americans they were trying to solve the problem.
“Is it emergency enough that you’re going to stop families from being put on the street?” Waters testified at a hearing Friday morning urging her colleagues to act. “What the hell is going to happen to these children?”
But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the top Republican on another panel handling the issue, said the Democrats’ bill was rushed.
“This is not the way to legislate,” she said.
The ban was initially put in place to prevent further spread of COVID-19 by people put out on the streets and into shelters.
Congress pushed nearly $47 billion to the states earlier in the COVID-19 crisis to shore up landlords and renters as workplaces shut down and many people were suddenly out of work.
But lawmakers said state governments have been slow to distribute the money. On Friday, they said only some $3 billion has been spent.
By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
Some places are likely to see spikes in evictions starting Monday, while other jurisdictions will see an increase in court filings that will lead to evictions over several months.
Biden said Thursday that the administration’s hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month.
At the White House, deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration backs the congressional effort “to extend the eviction moratorium to protect these vulnerable renters and their families.”
The White House has been clear that Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium because of the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. But there were also concerns that challenging the court could lead to a ruling restricting the administration’s ability to respond to future public health crises.
The administration is trying to keep renters in place through other means. It released more than $1.5 billion in rental assistance in June, which helped nearly 300,000 households. Biden on Thursday asked the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs to extend their eviction moratoriums on households living in federally insured, single-family homes. In a statement late Friday, the agencies announced an extension of the foreclosure-related ban through the end of September.
On a 5-4 vote last month, the Supreme Court allowed the broad eviction ban to continue through the end of July. One of those in the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, made clear he would block any additional extensions unless there was “clear and specific congressional authorization.”
Aides to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the chair of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said the two were working on legislation to extend the moratorium and were asking Republicans not to block it.
“The public health necessity of extended protections for renters is obvious,” said Diane Yentel, executive director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “If federal court cases made a broad extension impossible, the Biden administration should implement all possible alternatives, including a more limited moratorium on federally backed properties.”
Landlords, who have opposed the moratorium and challenged it repeatedly in court, are against any extension. They, too, are arguing for speeding up the distribution of rental assistance.
The National Apartment Association and several others this week filed a federal lawsuit asking for $26 billion in damages because of the impact of the moratorium.
“Any extension of the eviction moratorium equates to an unfunded government mandate that forces housing providers to deliver a costly service without compensation and saddles renters with insurmountable debt,” association president and CEO Bob Pinnegar said, adding that the current crisis highlights a need for more affordable housing.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/08/03/white-house-evictions-democrats/
The Biden administration announced a temporary ban on evictions across most of the country on Tuesday, a move that bent to intense pressure from liberal House Democrats but that President Biden acknowledged may not prove constitutional.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a moratorium on evictions for 60 days for U.S. counties with “substantial and high levels of community transmission” of the coronavirus, according to an agency news release. About 90 percent of the country will be covered by the ban as the virus’s delta variant spreads quickly throughout the country, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.
The 19-page order lists criminal penalties including fines and jail time if someone is found to have violated the eviction moratorium.
The Biden administration had previously said it had no legal authority to extend a separate national eviction moratorium that lapsed over the weekend. A statement from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Tuesday evening pointed to the emergence of the delta variant and said “it is imperative that public health authorities act quickly to mitigate such an increase of evictions, which could increase the likelihood of new spikes in SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
Are you a renter or landlord impacted by federal or local eviction moratoriums? Tell the Washington Post your story.
The administration’s move Tuesday capped a sudden and remarkable rift between Biden and his House Democratic allies, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who pushed the administration to act. Late last week, just days before the CDC’s moratorium was set to expire, the White House issued a last-minute call for Congress to pass a law offering new eviction protections. At the time, the White House said it did not have the legal authority to do so on its own.
House Democrats responded angrily, saying such a measure was impossible to pass through Congress on short notice and pressed Biden officials to extend the moratorium unilaterally. Neither side acted, and the moratorium lapsed.
Pelosi waged a multiday campaign to press the White House to act unilaterally. She spoke on the phone with multiple senior White House officials — including White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, White House aide Steve Ricchetti and the president himself — to urge them to reverse course and extend the ban, according to one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal conversations.
Rep. Cori Bush (Mo.), who was homeless once, drew immense support from other Democrats by sleeping outside the U.S. Capitol for four consecutive nights in protest of the lapsed moratorium, sending a signal to the White House that the backlash was only growing. The White House had spent weeks trying to corral Democrats behind a big infrastructure package and there were clear signs in recent days that the party was fracturing. So after days of insisting there was nothing the White House could do, the Biden administration announced its new actions on Tuesday.
The eviction moratorium has ended. Here's what renters need to know.
Republicans are expected to oppose the move. Conservatives said the CDC’s order could exacerbate housing shortages by taking funding away from housing developers, which they said would in turn reduce their incentives to build.
“There’s an old expression that the best way to make people starve is to make food free. The best way to make people homeless is to make housing free,” said Casey B. Mulligan, who served as an economic official in President Donald Trump’s White House.
The rift between the White House and House Democrats over the expiration of the eviction moratorium had escalated earlier Tuesday as Pelosi ruled out bringing lawmakers back from their recess to address the issue through new legislation.
On a private call with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and House Democrats, Pelosi said the consensus of the caucus was that the House should not come back from its recess and that lawmakers should focus on urging the Biden administration to extend the moratorium unilaterally, two people familiar with the conversation said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a discussion that was meant to remain private.
Pelosi’s comments sent a clear signal to the White House that Congress was not going to act and that it would be up to the Biden administration to take unilateral action on evictions.
Also on the call, Yellen fielded lawmakers’ questions about delays in disbursing more than $46 billion in emergency rental assistance approved by Congress. Despite the expiration of the moratorium over the weekend, the Treasury Department has struggled to get funding out the door to renters in need — with recent administration estimates suggesting only a fraction of it has been released.
Data from Moody’s has shown more than 6 million Americans are behind on rent, and local housing organizers fear an uptick in eviction proceedings as the moratorium lapses.
Evictions are about to restart as tenants wait on billions in unspent rental aid
Sperling told reporters on Monday that the administration was pushing state and local officials to enact their own eviction moratoriums, as well as pushing federal agencies such as the Agriculture Department to extend eviction moratoriums where possible. Sperling also announced an “all-agency review” to learn why state and local governments are not getting funding out.
It is not clear how much more the Treasury Department can do to accelerate the distribution of funding.
“States and cities need at least another couple months to get this money out, and there’s no sticks or carrots Treasury can wield to make that happen faster. What we need is time,” said Paul Williams, a housing expert and fellow at the nonprofit Jain Family Institute and the author of an analysis on the current crisis.
The administration had said its hands are tied by an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh saying any further extension of the moratorium would need congressional approval. But some experts argued the administration should still try to fight for it in court, noting Kavanaugh’s concurrence — written before the delta variant renewed fears about the impact of the coronavirus on renters — also pointed to the need to get rental relief disbursed.
Rachel Lazarus, legal aide attorney in Gwinnett County, Ga., said she hopes extending the moratorium will convince more landlords to work with existing financial aid programs, rather than try to evict tenants and replace them with new ones. She said the order may help thousands of renters stay in their homes in her area alone.
“We were gearing up for a lot of people in desperation saying they don’t have anywhere to go and having very little assistance for them,” Lazarus said. “When I saw this, I was very relieved.”
The only part that pisses me off is that he'd be all too willing to raise the limit if they were in charge submitting their own plans, otherwise I wouldn't support raising the limit anymore than the typical 3% for inflation in addition to whatever adjustments for population.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Im not sure about the math, but money needs to get spent setting up our cities schools that have been crumbling, removing toxic metals in them too, etc.
We need to quit screwing around with this shit and start really putting the work in like we did when we made all these roads out of the cities across the nation. We need to improve the lives of people and not just pretend like the wealthy being able to live off interest all their lives and inflate their wealth tax free for another generation should be more important. We need to start doing the big things that only can be done by a strong federal government.
If that is a little more than 3% inflation, it would come down to how much more gains int he future we can make to see if it is worth it. But doing nothing like the Republicans have been forcing DC to do is wasteful and inefficient.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
The whole 'socialism' thing though would have led to Trump and Republican control of the house and senate instead of Biden and the Democrats in charge.
Yeahhhhh...we're a little conflicting sometimes when it comes to approved pandering. Some topics are "don't do the right thing when it's a loser" and some topics are "you have to do the right thing even when it's a loser". And it would probably be worse to support expanded education while simultaneously pretending like education isn't a socialist aspect living within a capitalist economy, because then you'd come off like a typical politician. So you're stuck, either you lie and pretend like it isn't what it is and look like a bullshitter, or you say what it is and watch your opponents clutch their pearls, or you just keep going on with shitty education while the world passes you by.
