This is my stimulus update for Tuesday, August 25.
California Fires
First of all, I’m not sure how many of you saw my post from last night, but my heart really goes out to all of my fellow Californians out there who are dealing with these terrible fires, and also to those of you in other states who are indirectly affected due to the smoke traveling across multiple states.
It’s absolutely crazy, yesterday on our family vlog not only was the video just about our day-to-day family life but about five minutes into the video I show you how close one of the fires is to our town, our home is thankfully not immediately threatened, but that could change at a moment’s notice with this extreme heat that we’ve been experiencing lately.
Fake Stimulus Update
Before we get into the true stimulus update, we gotta go over the false stimulus update, the clickbait update.
I’ve seen videos from today stating that Congress just announced some new stimulus bill.
This is false. The latest stimulus bill we’ve seen is the “skinny” Republican bill that was released last week and we previously discussed.
Mitch McConnell At Ecofibre Plant In Georgetown
And speaking of Republicans, yesterday we saw Mitch McConnell speaking at the Ecofibre plant in Georgetown, Kentucky yesterday, and he was talking stimulus, he did bring up stimulus checks and his hopes that a resolution will be brought to the stimulus negotiations issue, here’s the clip or read the transcript below:
Mitch McConnell: We’re also included another 1200 dollar direct payment to those low income people who’ve been hit the hardest in the pandemic. Many of them working in the hospitality field, restaurant, hotel. Not an insubstantial amount of money. But regretfully, we have not been able to reach an agreement yet, and I hope we will, because the Coronavirus is not paying a whole lot of attention to the election. And the American people need additional assistance now, that can only be done on a bipartisan basis. And I hope we’ll be there.
So when he talks about the low-income people in certain industries, if you look at the HEALS Act that he’s referring to, it’s the same income limitations as the CARES Act, so I think he chose those words, just like he chose those words when asked about stimulus checks in Kentucky a couple months ago when he threw out the $40,000 income figure, because he knows a lot of people in this area work in those industries, but point is, look, we have the Senate Majority Leader, top Republican in the Senate, still talking about a second round of stimulus checks, which is a good sign, especially considering that we saw that skinny Republican bill that didn’t contain stimulus checks.
So now recently we’ve had the White House via Mark Meadows bring up stimulus checks again, as well as Mitch McConnell, just yesterday.
So I don’t think that Republicans have “abandoned” the idea of a second stimulus check.
And at the end of the clip there, McConnell I think was kind of taking a dig at Pelosi when he said, you know, I hope we can reach an agreement soon because the coronavirus doesn’t care about the election, underlying message being, “Pelosi thought that her Post Office bill was urgent enough to call for a House vote this pass Saturday but not assistance for the American people.”
Nancy Pelosi On MSNBC
Pelosi for her part was on MSNBC yesterday and was asked directly if Congress will help the people before the election or even before the end of the year, and it was more of the same. She talks about the HEROES Act and blames Trump for stimulus legislation not passing, here’s the clip or read the transcript below:
Ayman Mohyeldin: Can you honestly tell people that Congress will do anything to help them in the next 71 days or even by the end of the year?
Nancy Pelosi: Well, a lot of that will be up to the Administration if they stop making their misrepresentations to the American people. But 101 days ago, Congress passed, in a bipartisan way, legislation to honor our heroes, state and local government workers, health care workers, teachers, first responders, sanitation, transportation, food workers and the rest who meet the needs of the American people. We also said we want to open up our schools and our economy in a healthy way by addressing the coronavirus, with testing, treating, tracing, et cetera, spacing, wear your masks and the rest. And then put money in the pockets of the American people.
Today, as I think about this and watch the President’s remarks, I think, you know, some of his supporters, while they prefer him they have to know that they are choosing him over their own children. The President is standing in the way of our passing legislation and having a strategic plan to crush this virus so that children can go to school safely, that teachers can go to school safely to work. And this involves everything: the schools, ending the coronavirus, having the protections in the schools if children go there, to have the funding for state and local government who supplies over 90 percent of public education. And also, if parents must go to work – and he’s declared teachers essential – if they must go to work, and their children cannot go to school, then we must have child care which they are resisting.
So what they’re doing is really immoral.
She went on to call Trump a domestic enemy of our voting system, which is an entirely separate discussion, but the point is at this point with second stimulus negotiations, we just have more blame being thrown around.
So really the only “good” news we have today is really the unemployment so at this point at least thirty states have been approved by FEMA for three weeks’ worth of funding for the $300 kick-in, and it appears that in many of these states, because the payment is retroactive to the week ending August 1, applications are simply receiving $900 for three weeks, which is what the funding batches are in.
There are reports of this happening in Texas, and I imagine that this is going to be the case for many states.
States Approved By FEMA for $300 Weekly Unemployment
But just to run down the list of states approved for the $300 kick-in, they are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.
And Arizona and Texas have reportedly already been issuing payments.
Louisiana said they would start this week, Missouri is aiming for this weekend, Utah and New Mexico said it might be a few weeks, and Colorado said mid-September might be when it might be able to get payments out.
We know that there are some states in the list I read previously, such as New York, that originally indicated they were not going to pursue the funding for the $300 kick-in but have now obviously changed course.
States That Have Applied or Will Apply
Other states that we know have applied or are going to apply are Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Also, Kentucky, Montana, and West Virginia have all indicated that they would be willing to kick in the extra $100 weekly for eligible residents of their respective states, so those residents would get $400 weekly
The District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have not yet applied, they have until September 10 to do so, and we know that South Dakota will not be applying at least based on the governor’s statements.