Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans to furlough thousands of city workers for 26 days out of the next fiscal year as one of several measures to help balance the budget amid the COVID-19 pandemic during his State of the City address on Sunday evening. The furloughs will affect all civilian employees and will be equivalent to a 10% reduction in pay and will take effect July 1, the mayor said. A hiring freeze already put in place will remain in effect, as well. “I do not take that step lightly. I know every day we’re down even one...

The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced a bevy of new moves aimed at getting another $2.3 billion of financing into businesses and revenue-pinched governments. Among the Fed's measures were details regarding its Main Street business lending program and several other initiatives it is undertaking to backstop the reeling U.S. economy. The central bank also provided more detail on its market interventions, including plans to buy corporate bonds both at an investment-grade level as well as high-yield, or junk, bonds. Under provisions outlined for the first time, the loans would be geared toward businesses with up to 10,000 employees and less...

The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn't going to work for a large number of small business owners after all. Remember the deal the president signed to save America’s small businesses from ruin during the government’s coronavirus shutdown? The one hammered out by the Senate and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin over weeks of tense negotiation while Americans worriedly watched, hoping good news might come before a depression does? The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn’t going to work for a large number of small business owners...

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Sunday there will be no huge economic stimulus program as the country faces the threat of coronavirus-induced crisis almost certainly unlike any it has seen in the past century. "There is a lesson that we have learned well and that we don't forget," López Obrador said to an empty and echoing National Palace patio. "An economic model that only benefits minorities does not yield general well-being, but on the contrary engenders public misery and violence."

Of all the industries feeling the fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic, America’s airlines are likely the hardest hit. The Transportation Security Administration estimates that air traffic is down 90 percent as President Trump is purportedly considering domestic travel restrictions on top of the international bans already put in place. Congress sensibly stepped in to protect the struggling airline industry in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and. Economic Security (CARES) Act, providing aviation businesses $29 billion in loans and loan guarantees and $32 billion in direct grants to defray payroll costs. But in exchange, Congress empowered the federal government to demand access...

The House speaker not only wants to use the coronavirus pandemic to entrench Obamacare, she wants to make taxpayers fund abortion in the process In the words of her former House colleague Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi never wants to let a crisis go to waste. The House speaker not only wants to use the coronavirus pandemic to entrench Obamacare, she wants to make taxpayers fund abortion in the process.A recent summary of the legislation Pelosi plans to introduce as an alternative to Senate Republicans’ “stimulus” bill laid out the strategy. House Democrats want to force insurers to reopen enrollment in...

You seriously could never make this stuff up. – In a series of Tweets this afternoon, GOP Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas listed the absurd list of Democrat demands that are holding up the crucial stimulus bill. Below is the text of those Tweets: Families and businesses need help now to survive the China virus pandemic. But @SpeakerPelosi walked away from negotiations to write her own bill, full of absurd provisions completely unrelated to the crisis at hand. Here’s what Speaker Pelosi is demanding while Americans suffer: 1. Corporate pay statistics by race and race statistics for all corporate boards...

Congressional leaders are likely to put a very ugly deal in front of the American people, and if it passes, America may be unrecognizable after this pandemic. But there is a way to stop it, if people on the populist left and people on the populist right work together. Here’s the situation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the Trump administration are negotiating a bailout package to address the coronavirus crisis. There’s been a lot of chatter about the need to support workers as the economy goes into a freeze.... But in the United States,...

As members of Congress debate the terms of the trillion-dollar-plus coronavirus relief package for businesses and individuals, they would do well to remember our recent history. Most people in professional Washington hate the populist era we are going through. The populist period exists because Americans already feel like their elected officials are more responsive to large corporate interests than to the individuals who elected them. This played out big-time after the Wall Street bailouts fueled the tea party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left. People on the left and right agree that some government assistance...

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has resigned from the Boeing Board of Directors. She explained that she is against their seeking bailout funds during the coronavirus pandemic. Haley wrote in her resignation letter: I have had the pleasure of working with Boeing for almost ten years now. As South Carolina Governor I came to know the quality of the company, but more importantly, the excellence of the Boeing team and workforce. When I was asked to join the Board of Directors, there was no better team I could think of being a part of. As Boeing has gone through the...

Federal and state governments are making a massive gamble about a little-understood new virus. They are betting our future on the most extreme worst-case scenario without considering the costs. Federal and state governments are making a massive gamble about a little-understood new virus. They may not only be betting our entire economy, but our nation’s future. Thus it’s imperative that they not make foolish choices.We shouldn’t allow policy under a Republican president to be driven by a Democrat like Steve Mnuchin, whose overwhelming priority is reassuring Wall Street above all else. Voters don’t vote for Donald Trump to get...

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has asked for a federal bailout of $4 billion because of the growing cost of the novel coronavirus. MTA Chairman Patrick Foye, in a letter to New York’s congressional delegation Tuesday, said the authority estimates that it will lose $3.7 billion in fare revenues as ridership has plummeted since the start of outbreak early this month and is expected to stay at a low level for six months.

Germany’s most in-the-red towns could soon get help from the government, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Saturday. In an interview with the Funke media group, Scholz said Berlin “has signaled its willingness” to help remove a €40 billion ($44 billion) debt from local authorities on a “one-off basis.” Out of Germany’s 11,000 local authorities, Scholz said the plan concerns “around 2,500 cities and municipalities that are squeezed by so much debt that they can barely breathe.” Removing the debt would likely set local authorities up to spend more on much-needed infrastructure repairs and renovations on schools, kindergartens and swimming...

A Southwest Florida congressman is behind a proposal to ensure federal dollars won’t be used to bailout insolvent states, territories and local governments. At the end of last week, U.S. Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Fla, introduced the “Government Bailout Prevention Act” which he showcased on Tuesday. “American taxpayers do not like when their money is used to bail out failing corporations or businesses and this dislike extends to state and local governments who are fiscally irresponsible,” Rooney said. According to Rooney’s office, the proposal “prevents the federal government, including the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, from paying or guaranteeing state and...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez interceded on behalf of an Ecuadorian woman who was banned from traveling to the U.S. because of allegations she had engaged in visa fraud. The woman, Estafania Isaias, is the daughter of a fugitive from Ecuador convicted in absentia for bank fraud and whose relatives in Florida made significant campaign donations to the New Jersey Democrat's 2012 campaign and the Democratic Party. Current and former U.S. government officials tell NBC 4 New York that Estefania Isaias was barred from traveling to the U.S. in 2007 because she allegedly lied on visa applications to bring immigrant...

Another scandal for the "scandal-free" Obama administration. Not all ICE targets work construction or smuggle drugs. Some are key figures in the Dem machine. But the era of Obama corruption is over. There's a new sheriff in town. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this week arrested two millionaire fugitives from Ecuador whose family donated heavily to American political campaigns. Roberto and William Isaías, 74 and 75, were detained Wednesday in Miami and taken to a detention facility for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation, The New York Times reported Friday. ICE told the Times that the brothers were “unlawfully present” in...

When both Democratic and Republican lawmakers recently joined together to support a taxpayer-funded, multibillion-dollar bailout of big union pension funds, you didn’t need to be a “swamp” creature to know something has gone terribly wrong in Washington, D.C. But that is exactly what happened when U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, offered a so-called bipartisan plan to address the pension crisis. However, this proposed bailout of organized labor’s retirement plans would cost federal taxpayers billions — while setting a dangerous precedent that would expose taxpayers and laborers to more financial mischief. The expectation...

With White House officials promising to work to bail out Obamacare, how can tax reform have ‘essentially repealed’ the behemoth law? On Wednesday afternoon, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) announced they would postpone until the New Year their request for considering an Obamacare “stability” bill. Their statement capped a sequence of developments that raised almost as many questions as it answered—about the “stability” bill, the process used to consider it, and Obamacare itself.1. If Congress Just ‘Essentially’ Repealed Obamacare, Why Pass a Bill to Prop It Up? Ahead of final passage of the tax bill on Wednesday,...

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are pushing for a $10 billion a year payout to insurance companies that sell Obamacare plans. President Trump calls it "bailing out" the insurance industry. Truer words were never spoken. The politicians backing this sweetheart deal claim it will protect consumers. Don't fall for it. The money will go straight to the bottom lines of insurers -- who enjoy tremendous clout in Washington, D.C., thanks to over $85 million in campaign contributions and over $150 million spent on lobbying every year. The deal's authors, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R. Tenn., and Sen. Patty Murray, D....

The danger of a Republican bailout of Obamacare is mounting with every passing day. Moderate Republicans calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus are quietly negotiating with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to throw a multibillion-dollar lifeline to the Obamacare insurance exchanges. This bailout, of course, would be an epic betrayal by the Republican Party, which has promised to repeal and replace the financially crumbling health law. Obamacare's apologists object to the term "bailout" for this rescue package. The left prefers the euphemism "stabilizing the insurance market." They claim this is merely a payment to low-income families to help...