At Last A Little Relief

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Yesterday, Congress passed the CARES Act and Trump signed the bill in a ceremony in the White House. The Secretary of the Department of Labor tweeted news of the events yesterday:

Despite its numerous flaws and wholly inadequate support for workers, we now have some relief for Americans. $1200 for every adult citizen, $500 for each child, for everyone with income under $75k a year. For those living large on greater incomes, the benefit phases out at $99k. It won’t be a permanent solution, but they did increase the maximum weekly unemployment benefit by $600 a week for 4 months. That’s a very hefty increase. That should help a lot of people get by until we can go back to work again.

This week, a record 3 million people applied for unemployment benefits. Of course, that number is preliminary, and it will be revised. Those 3 million people could be the start of a trend towards 20% unemployment, a number suggested by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin if we did nothing. I hope he’s wrong and that we will see far less unemployed than current trends suggest.

I’ve seen reports of people getting huge medical bills after recovering from COVID-19. On…