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from the a-billion-here-a-billion-there-pretty-soon-you're-talking-about-real-money dept.
Biden signs $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, making $1,400 checks and child tax credit official:
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which includes a third stimulus check, for up to $1,400, and an expanded child tax credit. The IRS and Treasury will begin to send the new stimulus checks as soon as this weekend, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday at a press briefing.
The bill signing comes just one day after the amended bill passed in the House by a vote of 220-211. The House initially passed the bill on Feb. 26, and the Senate approved it last week, albeit with some changes.
[...] Democrats had been pushing to get the stimulus package signed into law before current unemployment benefits expire March 14. Biden was originally scheduled to sign the bill on Friday, but it got moved forward after Congress sent the final bill to the president more quickly than anticipated, Psaki said on Thursday.
The stimulus package, called the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, includes changes made by the Senate last week, such as reducing income limits for the third stimulus payment and lowering proposed weekly unemployment benefits from $400 a week to $300 a week (though they'd extend through Sept. 6 rather than the end of August). The Senate also dropped a federal minimum wage increase from the legislation, but proponents say they'll reintroduce that at a later date.
How to watch President Biden's national address tonight.
House passes $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, sends it to Biden to sign:
[...] Here are the proposal's major pieces:
- It extends a $300 per week jobless aid supplement and programs making millions more people eligible for unemployment insurance until Sept. 6. The plan also makes an individual's first $10,200 in jobless benefits tax-free.
- The bill sends $1,400 direct payments to most Americans and their dependents. The checks start to phase out at $75,000 in income for individuals and are capped at people who make $80,000. The thresholds for joint filers are double those limits. The government will base eligibility on Americans' most recent filed tax return.
- It expands the child tax credit for one year. It will increase to $3,600 for children under 6 and to $3,000 for kids between 6 and 17.
- The plan puts about $20 billion into Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing and distribution, along with roughly $50 billion into testing and contact tracing.
- It adds $25 billion in rental and utility assistance and about $10 billion for mortgage aid.
- The plan offers $350 billion in relief to state, local and tribal governments.
- The proposal directs more than $120 billion to K-12 schools.
- It increases the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit by 15% through September.
- The bill includes an expansion of subsidies and other provisions to help Americans afford health insurance.
- It offers nearly $30 billion in aid to restaurants.
- The legislation expands an employee retention tax credit designed to allow companies to keep workers on payroll.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by julian on Friday March 12 2021, @02:38AM (49 children)
Everyone here deserves healthcare. I don't care what their status is. That's the standard in the rest of the civilized world that I would like us to be a part of. The psychic pain it causes conservatives when they know their tax dollars are being pooled to support all of us, including people who are undocumented, is a value-add for me. And even beyond the petty pleasure I take in that, from an epidemiological perspective, disease doesn't care about human contrivances like nationality and borders. It's the right thing to do morally, and scientifically.
But it's a distraction issue anyway. Immigration is a totally different topic and I have a whole lot of reforms on that I would like to see including holding businesses responsible for exploiting undocumented workers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:46AM (14 children)
So it's not just that you support it but "The psychic pain it causes conservatives [...] is a value-add for me" because "It's the right thing to do morally"?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @03:09AM (1 child)
I'd argue that if someone is doing wrong, the fact that being made to do right causes them psychic pain *is* a good thing. You law-and-order types are supposed to be all about that aren't you? Aren't you?
Besides which, while some of my ideas on immigration sound decidedly un-liberal, Julian is correct that disease doesn't give a shit about national borders. Regardless of how someone got here, if they *are* here, there is no realistic way of making sure they don't spread disease to others. It would cost less, in the medium and long term, to care for people as and when they need it.
It's not hard to figure this out. What you're really saying here is that you would rather subsidize the suffering, the...ahem, "psychic pain" as well as physical pain and disease, of those you don't like, no matter the actual cost in money, or even the cost in lives and quality of life of those people you supposedly do like. Again, disease doesn't give a shit about ingroups and outgroups.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @08:00PM
a bullet for bean niggers is still cheaper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:38AM (11 children)
Your response is abnormal, in fact, it doesn't sound human.
Yes, pissing off bad, immoral people is the right thing to do. Especially when they are already bad tempered. They are the most entertaining. You don't like it? Oh well...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @06:02AM (10 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:25AM
Khallow, khallow is the bad person here. Bad, bad khallow! Nasty, selfish, Republican richie wannabe khallow! Very, very bad person, khallow!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:06PM (8 children)
The people who enjoy watching people suffer instead of giving them help. There are a lot of you here. Just typical middle class white folks.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday March 13 2021, @12:36AM (7 children)
Like when julian wrote:
Only documented example of someone who enjoys watching people suffer. What gets missed in your naive pretension, is that suffering also comes from those higher taxes. Medical care isn't free. Someone pays for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @02:43AM (6 children)
Yes, he is right about those people. People who would make other people suffer by denying them their needs and social safety nets deserve to suffer even more. Rich people can afford to pay the taxes. They still have plenty left over. So fuck them if they don't like it. The is no reason to ever sympathize with a rich person about their taxes. They're just a bunch of crybabies
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 13 2021, @05:16AM (5 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @01:43AM (4 children)
The rich aren't suffering, they're only complaining. Mere equality is so oppressive!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 14 2021, @05:22AM (3 children)
The rich aren't the worst affected by taxes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @05:54PM (2 children)
Yeah, not after Reagan, Bush, and Trump. They moved the burden down to the middle class and poor. We have to bring back the old rates and make the system actually progressive where the highest brackets pay the most tax.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 15 2021, @03:08AM (1 child)
The rich never paid those old tax rates.
This is all profoundly dumb. Government can't cover this stuff, even if we seize outright all the rich people wealth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @10:52PM
The rich never paid those old tax rates.
Well, it's time they do! We have to kill all their fancy deductions
(Score: 2, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:12AM (27 children)
Please don't tell me that we have an Azuma Hazuki sockpuppet here.
Come on, why do you have to make us all look bad? You were on to a good thing with "Everyone here deserves healthcare." - arguable, depending on where you start, but at least a benevolent position based, presumably, in compassion.
And then "...psychic pain it causes conservatives..."
Why did you go there? What on earth good does swinging a hatred-filled censer do for your argument? Do you think that's what's going to win people over?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @03:18AM (26 children)
I don't sockpuppet, you fragile little snowflake. I don't need to. My opinions stand on their own merits.
And quit the fucking tone-trolling already. By this point, anyone who doesn't see the sense in points like Julian's or mine isn't "undecided," they're already past the point of no return and no amount of reason or "civil discourse" is going to change their minds. Perversely, reason or civility from someone holding an opposing position is going to make them oppose it even harder, because this type sees attempts to take the high road as a sign of weakness.
This schtick of yours is getting incredibly tiresome. There is no "winning over" people who have stared evil in the face and decided they want more of it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:25AM (23 children)
OK, so just for the sake of curiosity, how might someone who is worried about driving away allies suggest that folks, y'know, try not to be obnoxious without it being tone-trolling?
Because if any suggestion that anybody anywhere might want to kick it back a notch when they sound as if they're grinding their teeth while typing holes in their keyboard is automatically tone-trolling, we're going to need a different word. Tone-sincering?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @03:28AM (18 children)
Here's a suggestion: stop pretending to be anything but a trolling shit-stirrer, as you're not fooling anyone. We've had this discussion before already: the irredeemable have disappeared beyond their own mental event horizons and nothing is going to pull them out save the accelerated Hawking-radiative process of hideous personal suffering in topical ways. These people do not and will not believe X is a problem until X happens to them. Until then, they're beyond reach, trapped inside their own selfish psychic Schwarzchild radii.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @03:48AM (17 children)
You're ignoring the persuadable middle.
Are you just deciding to cede them to the likes of Mitch, because you can't be bothered to look approachable? Do you think that the antics of the street vandals over the last year won the election? Seriously, do you think Biden would have done better if he'd been caught on camera throwing bottles at a line of cops?
If anything's tiresome here, it's the obstinate refusal to do the hard work of actually reaching out, rather than sitting in a puddle of your own loathing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @04:34AM (16 children)
Again, there is no "persuadable middle" of any consequence left any longer. At this point, if someone has seen all these horrors and is somehow still undecided, it's because they're either completely morally vacuous, or else not actually in "the middle" at all and just keeping quiet about it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @06:09AM (2 children)
OK.
I give up.
Rave on.
I can't stop you, and you're buried much too far in your own little mental bunker to look around, and see what you're doing.
When you don't get, politically, what you want, look in the mirror, point at it, and say: "You're why we can't have nice things."
That's right; it's your reflection's fault, not yours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @07:41AM
Tone troll tone troll bullshit centrism and "leave em to mitch" threats
You are an idiot
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 12 2021, @08:09AM
Valiant attempt. Wise decision in the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @01:28PM (10 children)
What horrors? You trying to say something? I just see $1.5 trillion here of our future getting flushed because reasons. I think we're investing heavily in some future horrors, but then again, you aren't planning to flee for Canada for nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:48PM (9 children)
Another libertarian who does not understand money. Gets old, after a while, always have to explain that it is not something real, that is subject to physical scarcity. khallow must be one of those who's obvious rebuttal to the proposal to have Obama just order the US Mint to mint a trillion dollar coin of platinum, and deposit in the Fed, was that there is not enough platinum to make a trillion dollar coin, and it would be huge, and too big to fit in the Fed! As if a dollar bill contains a dollar's worth of paper and ink. Idiots incapable of abstract thinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @11:01PM
Going out on a limb here to guess, but maybe you can let me know whether the robes of the MMT cult are really as free below the belt as the whisper goes.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 12 2021, @11:43PM (4 children)
The fact that our currency is both fiat and floating ought to scare you shitless. I know it does to me. It means that the money isn't worth a damn thing except what we can convince people it's worth, and any sufficiently serious crisis of faith in government or other sociopolitical disruption will crash the economy as well.
Now a metal standard is stupid, but why not something like an energy standard? As a bonus, that would get us onto renewables right quick, as they would almost literally print money...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 13 2021, @01:00AM (2 children)
Hyperinflation is not hypothetical. We already have numerous examples of hyperinflation throughout history. Crashing the economy does have harmful consequences, but economies can and do recover. When money disappears, assets and people remain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:22AM (1 child)
Hyperinflation in the world reserve currency is extremely unlikely for many reasons. It's a complete non-issue. There is very little appreciable inflation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 15 2021, @04:00AM
The key one is that the world reserve currency won't stay the world reserve currency, if/when it happens. Should the US dollar become an economic hot potato due to hyperinflation, something else will have become the world reserve currency.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday March 13 2021, @08:43PM
Seems like we already have that [wikipedia.org]. Works best under conditions of scarcity, managed through warfare.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday March 13 2021, @12:13AM (2 children)
then we get to:
Sounds like you're the idiot here. I get inflation. I get trillion dollar coins [soylentnews.org]. The problem here is that you're trying to pay back debt with money of greatly diluted value. Borrowers aren't going to fall for that more than once - it's a one-time default.
Don't borrow money that you won't pay back in good faith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @12:53PM (1 child)
Are you nuts? Borrowers love paying back debt like that. The whole economy for the last 75 years has been based on the idea that inflation makes the dollar you pay back with less than the dollar you borrowed, so less painful to the wallet or purse.
Deflation, on the other hand …
And lenders don’t really have a choice except to go along with it. Or be stuck repossessing assets that will quickly drop in value to less than the note is worth. We saw that with the financial crisis - homes with 6-figure mortgages being sold at auction for $500 in Chicago, for example. So their only option is to keep the merry-go-round of low interest rates going.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 15 2021, @04:04AM
Except the other choice, don't go with it. Duh. You can talk all about the lack of choice, but they'll find those alternate choices.
What assets would those be again? Anything physical isn't going to do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @08:01PM (1 child)
Well, according to that other AC, fascist ideals were originally very liberal, but their methods left something to be desired. I think the same thing applies to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:46AM
He lied about that. Fascism is the reification of the military industrial complex. https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Fascism_Mussolini.html [thirdworldtraveler.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Friday March 12 2021, @03:30AM (2 children)
Start by logging in to post.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @11:50AM (1 child)
Why? So that you can make assumptions one the motives behind the words instead of judging the words on their own merit?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 12 2021, @01:28PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @06:15AM
They are just mad because someone called them out on their shit. They say racist, bigoted misogynistic shit all the time while pointing the fingers at others for doing it. They can sit and pretend it is not true because 'they are right' and everyone else is a racists. But we thank her for her racist views to remind everyone what they really are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday March 12 2021, @08:05AM
Listen, Zumi, letting aside the motives, the A/C you are answering to has a point.
I may have strong feelings (one way or the other) on some of the soylenters here; believe me (or not), berating them is a negative overall.
After a while, the feeling towards such berating posts doesn't get much different to the one arising from fusty-es constant "both parties are the same, wake up people and fuck them".
The magister tried the "naming and shaming the alt-right" for a long while now. What do you think he achieved?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @11:57AM
If you can't present your ideas without directly, intentionally insulting people and stereotyping broad swathes of the population, either you or your ideas have a problem. Where is the tone trolling in pointing that out? Basic principles of rhetoric and logic lead me to conclude that the real troll was the one who gloated about enjoying causing psychological agony to others.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @04:30AM
Mexico has universal healthcare. (superior, isn't it?) Here's the deal. When we find an illegal alien who might need healthcare, we deport the fucker.
Hmmm, we also provide socialized medicine in prison. That's another idea.
The VA provides it too. How's this: we ship illegals off to fight a ground war in Syria as infantry, then maybe Iran or Sudan, and after retirement they can get VA healthcare.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12 2021, @02:35PM (1 child)
How is it the people most frequent to cite "the rest of the world" invariably have little to no clue about "the rest of the world"? Do a quick search for Denmark zero asylum [duckduckgo.com] and educate yourself. The American policy on immigration is *insane* and nothing at all like the rest of the world. The rest of the world treats illegal immigrants as illegal immigrants. This absurd concoction you create in your head where an illegal in "the rest of the world" can just walk into a hospital, make it clear he's legal, and do as he fancies is simply completely out of touch with reality. If there was an urgent condition, they would be treated (same as in America) and then generally scheduled for rapid deportation or expulsion.
Denmark in particular has a unique solution. They're planning [nytimes.com] to start sending unwanted illegal immigrants to a small island miles off the coast once used for the quarantine of contagious animals. As the country's immigration minister stated, "[The illegal immigrants] are unwanted, and they will feel that."
The US has gone just batshit insane, and the stuff we're doing is nothing like this "rest of the world." I strongly recommend you, after this dumb virus is passed, actually take the opportunity to see "the rest of the world" and you may suddenly realize neither it nor America are anything like what you are constructing in your mind.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EEMac on Friday March 12 2021, @04:48PM
You're observing the collapse of a civilization. There's multiple possible outcomes. Try to guess what the result will be! Grab some popcorn and watch the show.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday March 12 2021, @04:06PM
It's not even just a question of what they "deserve": Sick people make other people sick. Which makes it in everybody's best interest to make sure fewer sick people are walking around or doing their jobs and infecting people. Which means giving out health care and paid sick leave to people who may not "deserve" it (whatever that means), which actually saves money in a matter of weeks.
But that simple reality is up against the significant portion of the US government and population that would gladly institute a genocide of anyone they consider "undesirable" if they thought they could get away with it, especially if they didn't have to do the dirty work themselves.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 13 2021, @08:08PM
"Everyone here deserves healthcare."
Health care paid for by extortion? Why do they deserve it? Their ancestors did not create that security for them. They deserve to die off, is what they deserve.
"I don't care what their status is."
That's because you are a weaponized, subversive, useful idiot.
"That's the standard in the rest of the civilized world that I would like us to be a part of."
No, that's the standard imposed on Jew slave states that the brainwashed slaves of those states stupidly accept.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @02:18AM
Nobody deserves anything.