From Sirota, an opening capture:
$600 Is Not Enough, And It Won’t Get Easier - Dems refused to seize a rare opportunity to outmaneuver McConnell - now the final COVID relief bill skimps on benefits, provides tax breaks to the rich, and notches a big win for austerity extremism.
Congressional leaders announced an agreement on a new $900 billion stimulus bill that will deliver a boost in unemployment benefits and provide $600 checks to some families. Democratic leaders are depicting this as a big win and are promising that these kinds of emergency spending bills will become “much easier” in a new Congress under Joe Biden. Both of those arguments are ridiculous.
Here’s the truth: Democrats had a rare opportunity to win on a wildly popular proposal for much bigger survival checks, but they chose to lose. Here’s some more truth: one-time means-tested checks of $600 is not a big victory, and not even the bare minimum that should be considered acceptable during an economic meltdown that has been punctuated by mass starvation and intensifying poverty.
Though the legislative language of the final package has not yet been released, it appears the meager checks come in a bill that will give new tax benefits to corporate executives to write off their meals and provide other tax breaks to businesses that used the Paycheck Protection Program — which will be a windfall for the wealthy. Will the bill change the law to similarly exempt emergency unemployment benefits from tax levies? We don’t yet know, but there’s no indication it will.
According to a bill summary circulating on Capitol Hill, the legislation provides a mere $286 billion for the survival checks and unemployment benefits, and an additional $51 billion for food aid and rental assistance. That’s not nothing, but it’s obviously inadequate. For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest one percent of households.
Joe Biden's fingerprints are all over this sell-out. Joe who was foisted on us by Dem insiders, along with Bloomberg, along with Lincoln Project Republicans, who are not friendly at all to US.
Owned bastards. Serving wealth royally, dumping on US. We need a revolution. Prompt, clean, and decisive. However, even if it has to be one seat at a time, one state legislature at a time, erosion and accretion in that slow painful reform way is better than anything about Joe Status-quo.
BOTTOM LINE: However long it takes - - - Defeat Bloomberg and his cohorts, who buy sweet deals. Do it by removing/replacing those selling the deals.
___________UPDATE__________
Down with Tyranny, here, a post from days ago, titled, "Trump, AOC & Bernie Agree There Should Be Much Bigger Pandemic Checks-- So Who's Preventing It?"
Biden's not lifting finger to rally Democrats around a real pandemic relief check, which should be $2,000 per person per month. Instead, McConnell and the Senate Republicans + Manchin and his conspirators among the House "Problem Solvers" and Blue Dogs are grudgingly agreeing to a measly one-time $600.00 check. What assholes! Last night, Jeff Stein, writing for the Washington Post, reported that Trump agreed with the progressives and his White House staff had to keep him "from issuing a statement calling for substantially larger stimulus payments for millions of Americans." He told allies on a phone call late yesterday that "he believes stimulus payments in the next relief package should be 'at least' $1,200 per person and possibly as big as $2,000 per person."
People are going to go hungry and get evicted because of this:
Trump was in the middle of formally drafting his demand for the larger payments when White House officials told him that doing so could imperil delicate negotiations over the economic relief package, the officials said. Congressional Republicans have insisted that the relief bill remain less than $1 trillion, and it’s currently designed to cost around $900 billion. Larger stimulus checks could push the package’s total over $1 trillion.An official White House statement said that Señor T "has heard from Americans all over the country who are hurting through no fault of their own, and he’s made clear he wants the next round of relief to include stimulus checks at a significant number. We’re working with Congress to settle on an agreement that can pass as soon as possible." Last Sunday, Trump told Fox's Brian Kilmeade that $600 isn't enough. "Right now," he told Fox viewers, "I want to see checks-- for more money than they're talking about-- going to people... I'm pushing it very hard, and to be honest with you, if the Democrats really wanted to do the deal, they'd do the deal."
There's more detail in succeeding paragraphs;, again, this link.
That means Trump would have signed off on bigger relief checks for ordinary people, but Pelosi and Schumer acquiesced in the sell-out. It may have even been them and Biden pushing to begger the relief checks, and not necessarily McConnell. Closed door negotiations allow all kinds of backstabbing of the people.