$2,000 a Month Only Happening With Extreme Rona or Murder Hornets

This is my stimulus update for Wednesday, May 6.

Now, breaking news this morning was that the IRS issued official guidance on how those who received stimulus payments who were not eligible for them — for example, if you’re incarcerated or dead — how you or your spouse or your relative can return that stimulus to the IRS, so check out that video, I give my take there along with the IRS instructions.

Now, like I mentioned before, we could see the Democratic proposal for CARES 2 in a number of days, we obviously haven’t seen it yet, but we should see it any day now and I expect that it will be a Democratic grab bag, I know we’re going to see state and local assistance in there, likely some additional funding for small businesses, likely funding for coronavirus testing, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Democrats propose in CARES 2 direct assistance to the people, whether that’s rent and mortgage cancellation or assistance, enhanced unemployment provisions, and quite possibly a proposal for more direct cash payments.

Democrats are going to ask for a lot because they know they will get that resistance, they know that ol’ Mitch, Mitch McConnell, is going to push back, he is, he has come out and said that he wants to push the pause button for now until all the funding from CARES 1 and the interim relief bill is flowing, he’s not saying he’s opposed to a relief package, I told you this last week, I told you last week that he’s even saying he would sign off on the Democratic prize target, more assistance to state and local governments, as long as it’s conditioned on the state enacting liability protection for small business owners who reopen, that protection that says they can’t be sued because someone claims that they contracted COVID-19 at their establishment, he also wants that protection for hospitals and other health care providers.

And obviously there will be resistance from Trump himself to a Democratic grab bag, so I don’t want to speculate too much on CARES 2, I think we just have to be patient and wait for Pelosi and company to put it out there, which I think they will do very soon, but what I want to talk about is what Trump said on ABC last night in the David Muir interview, link to the interview is in the description if you want to watch the whole thing, but right off the bat, what did they talk about?

Reopening the country.  Trump said, right off the bat, “The people want to go back to work.”

“The people want to get back to work.”  That’s where this man’s focus is, I know a lot of you are on unemployment, the additional $600 FPUC expires on July 31, I told you in my video yesterday evening about the Democrat proposal to extend that expiration date to December 31, I told you in that video that I think there is pretty much no chance of something like that passing the Senate and being signed by Trump, on its own merits, because extending the $600 weekly unemployment compensation is antithetical to the Republican agenda of getting people that to work.

That said, politics is a give and a get, so the Republicans might have to give a little on this point in the next relief bill, but I doubt that if unemployment is included at all in the final bill that the enhancements will be as robust as they are laid out to be in the Democratic proposal I told you about last night.

Back to Trump’s interview, and on this point of reopening the country, Trump again reiterated, “We have to get our country back and we’re going to have an economy in the not too distant future that will be equal to and I hope even greater [than it was before] in a short period of time.”

This is where his mind is, on reopening the economy.

And let me going on record as saying, there is no way that Donald John Trump, the 45th President of the United States, whose focus is on reopening the country, will approve a plan to send Americans monthly checks for $2,000 up to $5,500, there’s no way, 0% chance unless this virus situation gets a heck of a lot worse or the murder hornets cause a plague of biblical proportions.

And as states reopen, we might see the virus situation getting worse, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.

But the way things are going right now, with states reopening, not a chance, not a chance, that Republicans would sign off on a proposal for two grand up to $5,500 a month, if this trajectory continues, maybe another one-time stimulus payment, maybe, and even I think a lot of Republicans in Congress would think that’s a lot, but 0% chance, with the current trajectory of states opening, that they sign off on monthly checks to the tune of two grand plus a month.

Look, we’re all grown-ups here, I’m not going to tell you fairy tales.  I’m not going to pretend like I’m some populist hero, yeah, yeah, we need $2k a month, I’m just some CPA here here to tell you facts and, yes, my opinion, but an opinion that’s grounded in facts and logic, not sensationalism.

Going back to Trump’s interview on ABC last night, he appears willing to accept the tradeoff to some degree between loss of American lives and the country opening back up.

David asked him, “How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back where you want to be?”

Trump simply said, “yeah, well there could be some deaths,” and immediately he went to this, he said with the lockdown people are unemployed and depressed and turning to drugs and in extreme cases, suicide, so he kind of positioned reopening the country as, you know, we’re actually gonna save lives by opening the country, at least the lives of those who otherwise would turn to drugs and suicide who are depressed.

Speaking of which, if you are having a rough time right now, and this is not a sponsorship thing at all, but if you’re having a rough time, and I’m not associated with these folks at all, I just heard about it, if you’re having a rough time you can text HOME, that’s H-O-M-E, to 741741, you’ll get some automated messages and then be connected to a real crisis counselor, this is not a medical doctor, this a trained volunteer, so just view them as someone to talk to, not someone who can offer medical advice or diagnose mental health issues or anything like that.

Now, on that note of Trump appearing to be willing to accept some loss of life as the country reopens, on that note, some people justifiably thought yesterday that the coronavirus task force would be shut down, but this morning Trump tweeted that, and I quote, “the Task Force will continue on indefinitely with its focus on safety and opening up our country again.”

And this is that balance, that shift, I just talked about, all cues are pointing to Trump being willing to accept perhaps more people dying from corona if that’s what it takes to reopen the economy, and I think this tweet is somewhat symbolic of that, shifting the coronavirus task force’s focus from only mitigating the spread of COVID-19 to opening up our country again, albeit safely.

And on Twitter yesterday, I mentioned this in yesterday evening’s video, but just to reiterate because I know not as many of you watch my evening videos, though you should, but on Twitter yesterday Trump was talking about beefing up the meals and entertainment deduction.

Presumably how that needs to be expanded, and he’s talking about eliminating the capital gains tax for a time, these are things that assume the economy is roaring and back in action, because you don’t need to eliminate capital gains taxes if there ain’t no capital gains, and a beefed-up meals and entertainment deduction won’t do you any good if you can’t go out to eat or be entertained, and Trump even specifically said in the interview last night that we need sporting events and we need our stadiums to be full, and by the way, McConnell called the Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and told him flat out, “America needs baseball,” right, so Trump, McConnell, they want things to go back to the way things were sooner rather than later, and even better.

Just briefly, I wanted to note that, Pelosi, yesterday she held a virtual roundtable with small business owners, and what was she talking about?  She was talking about the Paycheck Guarantee Act.

What is the Paycheck Guarantee Act?  Proposed by Pramila Jayapal, it’s kind of like the Josh Hawley plan I told you about yesterday but on steroids, so for businesses struggling due to the crisis, the government would cover 100% of their base payroll costs for at least three months up to $100,000 per worker.

Now, that’s pretty ambitious, and we may very well see something like that in CARES 2, I think what the Democrats come out with in CARES 2 is going to be big, I think it’s going to be bold, I think it’s going to ask for a lot, and there’s going to be some showdowns on Capitol Hill, because we have a Democratic-controlled House, and a Republican-controlled Senate.

So please stay tuned, stay subscribed to the channel because you’d better believe that I will be covering the Democrats’ CARES 2 package when they put it out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ask for more stimulus, more direct cash payments.