Our House passed the HEROES Act late last week, and though it's a good bill offering real relief to those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, we can do more. Hence H.R. 6918, the Paycheck Recovery Act, would deliver actual help to small businesses (which the bill defines as having fewer than 20 employees, not "fewer than 500 at any one location" like the CARES Act) and guarantee continuing paychecks to those businesses' employees who make less than $90,000 who have lost their jobs during this pandemic. Close to 40 million Americans have now lost their job, and if I were a betting man I'd say most of them make less than $90,000. The assistance would end once the unemployment rate stays below seven percent for three months in a row. Oh, and no small business receiving assistance under this bill would be able to use the money for stock buybacks, executive bonuses, or payments to shareholders. Hence Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to help out small businesses and their employees by passing the Paycheck Recovery Act.
Meanwhile, Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government that, as they put it, "(a) pandemic is no time to gut the rules meant to keep consumers safe from financial scams." OK, there's never a good time to do that, but doing it now is just another gut-punch for good Americans, and this Administration is contemplating plenty of evil along these lines: they're trying to gut rules restricting predatory payday lenders, they're trying to lift rules on the kind of speculative trading that almost destroyed our economy in 2008, and they're trying to roll back rules that make banks invest in the communities in which they do business. Who told them that redlining and banksters and 300% payday loans are all popular? The self-interested fools who think whatever's good for them is good for America, and the idiots who have somehow dominated all debate on economic policy for the better part of the last half-century. I long for a land where hurting working people isn't the only policy choice, but first, let's stop the hurt as best we can.
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