As each week passes, the likelihood of a second round of stimulus payments – and an extension of the federal unemployment benefit – fade. Where it once seemed certain the Senate had to act on a second stimulus bill, it now seems apparent they have other options – or do they?
I hope you haven’t made plans to spend the proposed second round of stimulus payments. As each week passes in this long summer, the likelihood of receiving those payments becomes increasingly questionable. As a frequent writer on this particular topic, I must admit to being as confused as anyone else on this issue. Back on July 10, I wrote in this space that Congress had no choice but to pass a second stimulus bill. The Cares Act – which included the $600 per week federal unemployment subsidy, as well as the original round of $1,200 individual stimulus payments – was set to expire on July 31. Meanwhile, Election Day (November 3) was no longer a distant, over-the-horizon event. With the Democratic House-passed HEROES Act already sitting in the Senate for nearly two months, passage of a new – if stripped down – version of that bill looked certain by month-end. It seemed like political suicide to do otherwise. But I was wrong – or at least I have been so far. July 31 came and went, and no new act has been forthcoming from Congress, relating to either a second round of stimulus payments or an extension of federal unemployment benefits. That missed call is squarely on me, as well as on other writers, political analysts and assorted fortune tellers, who likewise saw passage of a second bill as inevitable. But where Stimulus Round Two goes from here is entirely on Congress. At this point at least, that outcome now seems so uncertain that it’s time to contemplate the possibility it may not happen at all. Follow me here… This is where the plot gets thicker. None of the conditions that drove the first stimulus package or generated talk of a second round have disappeared. Examples include: Despite steady improvement in the number of new claims for unemployment since the peak in April, the job market began cooling in July. In the most recent statistics released for the week ending August 15, the number of new claims for unemployment unexpectedly spiked to 1.1 million, up from 963,000 the previous week. Clearly the unemployment situation remains in crisis. The current level of new claims is more than four times the 250,000 per week average before the pandemic shutdown. And the number of people dependent on government benefits related to unemployment continues to be staggeringly high. “28 million,” reports Forbes Staff Writer, Sarah Hansen. “That’s how many people are receiving some form of government unemployment benefit, according to the Labor Department. That number is unchanged from two weeks ago.” Despite the statistical evidence of an improvement in the unemployment situation since the peak of the pandemic, it’s obvious we are not out of the woods yet – or even close. With the still lingering effects of the Covid-19 economic fallout, many millions of American households are facing the threat of foreclosure or eviction.
