Pirate's Cove

This isn’t the first time the NY Times editorial board has offered a good relief idea. They offered one about paying up to 90% of worker’s salaries a couple weeks ago, along with other measures. And now they note something similar

‘We’re Going Down, Down, Down, Down, Down’

The federal government is struggling to deliver financial aid to faltering employers — and workers are suffering the consequences…..

The federal government was slow to react to the pandemic. Local officials began ordering businesses to shut down weeks before Congress moved to provide those businesses with the lifeline they so obviously needed. Timely action by itself could have saved millions of jobs.

Wait a minute. What’s this about the federal government being slow to act? That’s shocking, isn’t it? Kinda puts the whole federalism thing into the idea pool, eh, where we should rely more on states, counties, and municipalities, where the power belongs.

European nations, including France, Germany and Britain, are fighting mass unemployment by paying companies to hold on to their employees. The government gives money to the companies, which give it to the workers; the workers stay home and get paid.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, has proposed an American version. Under his plan, the government would pay up to 80 percent of payroll costs for each employee up to the median wage — which the Social Security Administration pegged at $32,828 in 2018.

OK, so the idea is really that of EU nations and Josh Hawely, but give the NYTEB credit for pushing this

The most important shortcoming with Mr. Hawley’s program is that it’s still not big enough. It would provide a maximum of about $500 per week per employee, which is less than the $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits that Congress authorized in March.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, proposed on Friday that the government pay 100 percent of weekly wages for workers making up to $100,000. That’s overly generous. The payment is basically an unemployment check with the added bonus that people will eventually return to the same jobs.

The government doesn’t need to carry workers making $100,000 at their full salaries to get them through the crisis. But it shouldn’t be hard to find a sensible middle ground between the two schemes.

Of course, there’s a couple big problems with this: first, Democrats are trying to use these relief bills to push all sorts of their pet policies, including abortion funding, instant contact tracking, transforming to mail in ballots (with no security measures), doing away with student loan debt, giving money to illegal aliens and legal non-citizens, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and more. Rather than a targeted focus, they see this crisis as a way to implement their wish list.

The NYTEB is missing one big problem

Pelosi: House May Not Reconvene Until May — Or Longer

And here we thought they ran for office to actually lead. In an interview with Politico, Nancy Pelosi warned Donald Trump against reopening businesses too soon, even though the federal government has no real authority to shut them down in the first place. Pelosi also announced that she won’t be re-opening the House any time soon either, certainly not by their April 20 return date:

It’s rather hard to do something when the Democrat run House is absent, especially when Queen Nancy has not interest in virtual voting. Let’s be honest, Democrats want the pain to go on as long as possible and make any recovery tepid, in order to defeat Trump in November.