Trump pretends he has saved the economy while the country's misery deepens

[Zorro]

America, you’re on your own from here on out.

That is the message President Trump sent over the weekend with his quartet of executive orders — a quintessential Trump nonsolution to a monumental problem largely of his own making.

This may be the last significant action — or at least an action that pretends to be significant — that the president takes between now and Election Day to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it has caused. And it will accomplish almost nothing.

Let’s break it down:

• The supplemental unemployment insurance included in the Cares Act, which provided the 30 million or so Americans who have lost their jobs with an additional $600 a week, has expired. Trump’s order claims to restore $300 of that and asks states to chip in another $100. But it establishes a new program that could take months to implement and is potentially unconstitutional anyway, since the power to appropriate money lies with Congress, not the president.

• Trump ordered the temporary suspension of payroll tax collection, an action which, if it survives legal challenge, will do practically nothing to help the economy (by definition, people who are unemployed are not on payrolls). It will, however, weaken the Social Security and Medicare systems, which are funded by payroll taxes. As written, his order only defers collection of those taxes, which means employers and employees would have to pay them back later, though Trump claimed that if reelected, he would “terminate” the taxes, which he also can’t do.

• Trump instructed his administration to “consider” banning evictions at properties with federally owned mortgages. There is an eviction tsunami on its way that could see tens of millions of Americans lose their homes. This does nothing to prevent that.

• Trump delayed interest and payment requirements for student loans until the end of the year. This is the only one of the orders that might actually help people.

So in total, these executive orders will have little impact on the economic crisis Americans are facing. But just as Trump claims that his handling of the pandemic itself has been a story of unmitigated success, when he performed a signing ceremony before a crowd of dues-paying members at one of his golf clubs, he said the executive orders “will take care of pretty much this entire situation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/10/trump-pretends-he-has-saved-economy-while-countrys-misery-deepens/

[NCjack]

1. 1984 arrived on time, and it gets worse.

[LastDemocratInSC]

3. I agree. 1984 was when Reagan was reelected

and started hammering the nation with his right wing ideology in a serious way.

[RussBLib]

2. Mr Opposite

oh, and what a trick....you "suspend" FICA payments until tax time in 2021, by which time Biden will be president, the taxes will come due, and everyone will blame Biden for it, when it was a bomb planted by Donald.

What kind of JACKASS does this shit? And what kind of idiot thinks he will get away with it?

Donald J. ( for JACKASS) Trump.