McConnell Plans October Revote on Republican Stimulus Package
The Senate’s leader on Tuesday said he plans on returning a Republican COVID-19 relief plan for a vote, after Democrats blocked the bill last month. The $500 billion bill focuses on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), liability protections for businesses, added unemployment benefits, and money for reopening schools. Senators will vote on the bill on Oct. 19, when the full Senate returns to Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “We don’t agree with Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi that ‘nothing’ is better than ‘something’ for workers,” he said. “Unless Democrats block this aid for workers, we will have time to pass it before we proceed as planned to the pending Supreme Court nomination.” Pelosi, the leader of the House of Representatives, has suggested in recent weeks that…
WASHINGTON鈥擳he World Bank is calling for $25 billion in further COVID-19 emergency financing to help the world’s poorest countries grapple with the massive challenges of the global pandemic, the Bank’s president said on Wednesday.
David Malpass told finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 major economies that he would propose the supplemental financing package later this month to deputies of the International Development Association, the World Bank arm that helps the world’s poorest countries.
Malpass underscored concerns about the rising risk of “disorderly defaults” among low-income countries and said the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had proposed a joint action plan to help those for the most heavily-indebted International Development Association (IDA) countries.
Focus News: World Bank to Propose $25 Billion in Extra Funding for Poorest Countries
‘The $16 Trillion Virus’: Economists Estimate Financial Toll of COVID-19 on US
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and fellow Harvard University economist David Cutler argued in an essay on Oct. 12 that the pandemic will end up costing the United States $16 trillion, around four times the toll exacted by the 2007–2009 Great Recession. “Approximately half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19-induced recession; the remainder is the economic effects of shorter and less healthy life,” the two economists wrote in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which they called the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus “the greatest threat to prosperity and well-being the U.S. has encountered since the Great Depression.” Estimates by Summers and Cutler as to direct economic losses are consistent with earlier projections by the Congressional Budget…
