PODCAST: Breaking News! Paycheck Protection Program, Covid Stimulus Package Details. | Tim and Julie Harris

Key Highlights

• Nearly $900B bipartisan breakthrough after months of bickering
• “…far from perfect, but it will deliver emergency relief to a nation in the throes of a genuine emergency”
• Summary of what known so far

It’s taken months and months, along with much suffering, to come to some sort of bipartisan agreement on a second COVID relief package but it’s here.  This package totals nearly $900B to include $600 direct payments to qualifying Americans, a $300 boost in unemployment benefits and funding for small business aid and vaccine distribution.

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This relief package is only the second major legislation in response to the COVID pandemic since March when the $2T CARES Act was passed.  There are some glaring omissions within this package that lawmakers had to remove in order to achieve this compromise measure…sizable aid to cash-strapped state and local governments and a sweeping liability shield to protect businesses from COVID-related lawsuits.  Additionally, Republicans had to vastly scale back demands that would have prevented the chair of the Federal Reserve from establishing similar CARES Act-like facilities to appropriate aid.

Here’s what we know about this legislation at this point in time:

• Direct stimulus payments of $600 to adults earning up to $75,000
• Revived lapsed supplemental federal unemployment benefits at $300/week for 11 weeks
• Continue and expand federal payments (unspecified) for gig workers and freelancers and extend payments to workers whose benefits have expired
• More than $284B for businesses
• Revival of Paycheck Protection Program and expand its eligibility to include nonprofits, local newspapers/radio/TV broadcasters (unspecified)
• Allocation of $15B for performance venues, independent theaters and other cultural institutions
• Billions (unspecified) for testing, tracing and vaccine distribution
• $82B for colleges and schools
• $7B for broadband access
• $13B for nutritional assistance
• $25B in rental assistance (unspecified @ owner assistance)
• Unspecified agreement to extend eviction moratorium set to expire at end of December
• Ban on “surprise” medical bills from out-of-network health providers – hospitals and doctors now need to settle up with health insurers
• Simplification of federal government’s student financial aid form (Free Application for Federal Student Aid – FASA) and expansion of federal Pell grant program to low-income students and reversing ban on extending such grants to prisoners pursuing degrees while imprisoned
• Forgiveness of +$1B in federal loans to historically Black colleges and universities
• Deals (unspecified) to counter climate change and promote clean energy, the first such legislation in over a decade.

More when we know it.

Thanks to The New York Times and National Public Radio.

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