The Senate Republican HEALS Act (Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection, and Schools) was proposed on July 27, just days before the previous unemployment supplement and eviction moratorium for millions of Americans are due to run out. The total cost of the proposed Senate bill is about $1 trillion, which is $2 trillion less than the HEROES Act relief bill passed by the House of Representatives in May. The HEALS Act includes many protections that the country received in March, upon the initial passing of the CARES Act, including stimulus checks.
But what it doesn’t include are things like rent assistance (thus, more homeless people), funding for state and local governments (thus, drastic cuts in school funding), and continuing the income supplements for the unemployed. In fact, it CUTS unemployment assistance.
It is just what David Dayen said in The American Prospect: “a $1 trillion piece of legislation so comically in hock to corporate interests that one of the initials in the acronym stands for “liability protection.”
To call it the HEALS Act is a cruel joke.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer officially dismissed the proposal in a joint statement.
Two and a half months after Democrats delivered the solutions to defeating the virus and safely reopening the country in The Heroes Act, the Senate GOP has now come back with a weak, piecemeal proposal that will only prolong the suffering for millions of workers and families across America. The Senate GOP proposal is a sad statement of their values – selling out struggling families at the kitchen table in order to enrich the corporate interests at the boardroom table.
As columnist EJ Dionne says:
It should now be clear to everyone: The Republican Party is incapable of governing.
Sure, this sounds partisan. In fact, it’s an analytical reflection based on what is happening right before our eyes.
You would think that with our nation facing its most profound economic crisis since the 1930s, married to a public health disaster and growing unrest over racial injustice, the party that controls the White House and the U.S. Senate would get serious.
Instead, the Senate’s Republican majority and the Trump White House are in chaos, unable to produce a coherent relief bill to keep the economy from spiraling further downward.
Republicans admit this.
“It’s a mess,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) of the party’s own ramshackle proposal. “I can’t figure out what this bill’s about.”
- Helping their donors and the corporations they run
- NOT helping people who really need it, because “those people” should just learn to take care of themselves.
This is a cruel bill. Let’s lay out why.
Handouts to corporations …
- $29 billion for defense spending, including F35s and Apache helicopters, proposed in part to make up for the money previously siphoned from the defense budget for Pres. Trump’s border wall.
- $1.75 billion for a new FBI building (built on the current site, so that a competing hotel couldn’t purchase the site, which is right down the street from a Trump hotel)
- Protection against any lawsuits related to COVID-19 for five years, no matter how unsafe management made the workplace
- An “Employee Retention” tax credit and a “Safe Workplace” tax credit
- Business meal and entertainment tax breaks
… but hurting actual people
- Cutting unemployment by $400 a week
- Forcing states to figure out how to make up the unemployment difference while at the same time requiring the states to reconfigure their systems to new rules
- Narrowing the eligibility for Pandemic Unemployment Insurance, making it much harder for those on unemployment insurance to stay on
- No money for people facing eviction; no extension of the eviction moratorium
- No additional aid to states and municipalities that have lost millions of dollars and more during the pandemic. As a result of revenue shortfalls local governments must lay off health workers, first responders, teachers, food, transit, and sanitation workers and other frontline heroes.
- No OSHA protection for employees who contract COVID-19 at their place of employment
- No election funding or funding for the Post Office to make sure we can hold the fall election
- Inadequate investment in public health infrastructure and disaggregated data needed to invest in disproportionately harmed communities
- No additional funding for Medicaid or SNAP (while corporations are enjoying tax breaks for their business meals)
- No protection for medical debt or affordability of health plans
- No money for student loan relief
- Forcing schools to reopen to get their funding, but not providing any funding for the additional expenses needed to open safely
- Forming “rescue committees” to make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years (see “Catfood Commission”)
A few diamonds in a pile of manure
Is the bill entirely bad? No – there are a few (very few) good things in it.
- Another $1200 stimulus check to the same group of taxpayers who were meant to receive stimulus checks after passing of the CARES Act
- The stimulus check can’t be seized by a bank or other creditor to pay old debts
- A reemployment bonus, which will be paid out for those currently unemployed and that secure a job
- $118 billion in new money for hospitals, testing, contact tracing, treatment, and vaccines
- At least $100 billion more for the Paycheck Protection small business loan program
The bill has landed with a resounding thud, given all the objections to the bill voiced by Republican and Democratic lawmakers and their constituents. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not support all of the provisions in the bill that he, himself, has proposed. So it is highly unlikely it will pass in its current form.
But the fact that Senate Republicans even brought forward such a bill says a great deal about their priorities and whom they care about. Their aim was not to HEAL; it was to give gifts to their corporate buds, while letting those who are suffering continue to suffer.
Sorry, Senator McConnell and friends – you may think it’s cute to use HEALS with such a bill, but we do not. We just think it’s cruel.
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