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Yesterday, Senate Republicans unveiled their plan for the next #COVIDRelief package: https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/greenstein-senate-republican-covid-relief-proposal-fails-to-meet-needs-of
Their plan falls far short of meeting the needs of a nation reeling from a pandemic and economic crisis. 2/
It fails to provide anything close to the level of fiscal relief that states and localities need to avoid large-scale layoffs and budget cuts, which would prolong and deepen the recession: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/states-localities-need-more-federal-aid-to-avert-deepening-budget-crisis
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It fails to respond adequately to the millions of households struggling to afford food or pay the rent — particularly Black, Latino, and immigrant households, which have been hit particularly hard: https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/more-relief-needed-to-alleviate-hardship 4/
In particular, it doesn’t raise SNAP benefit levels. Yet 26M adults reported in recent weeks that their households, which include millions of children, often or sometimes or didn’t have enough to eat in the last 7 days. 5/
It contains *no* funding for homelessness services or additional rental vouchers and fails to extend the federal eviction moratorium that expired Friday. One in 5 renters — 13.8 million adults— were behind on rent in the week ending July 14. 6/
And, partly due to these inadequacies, it fails to provide the U.S. economy with sufficient support despite widespread projections that the economy will remain weak for a considerable time. 7/
This approach of offering woefully inadequate help for households and states appears to rest on a hope that state re-openings would lead to a rapid “v-shaped” economic recovery. 8/
Yet that strategy has already proven a public health failure; it has led to a spike in virus cases and deaths, and is now causing a number of states to reverse course: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/failed-reopenings-highlight-urgent-need-to-build-on-federal-fiscal-support 9/
In short, the proposal doesn’t come close to meeting the scale and nature of the challenges we face. And the severity of the crisis, not an arbitrary dollar limit, should determine the size of the response. 10/
Policymakers should act now, in a bipartisan fashion, to craft and enact a strong and effective #COVIDRelief package. More in my full statement: https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/greenstein-senate-republican-covid-relief-proposal-fails-to-meet-needs-of Fin/
