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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Americans need more economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic now and that he will deliver a plan costing “trillions” of dollars next week. He said the proposal includes relief for state and local governments grappling with the pandemic, as well as new support for people who lost their jobs or cannot afford rent. Biden also called for raising the minimum wage to $15, a campaign promise, and for sending out $2,000 in direct cash payments. “We need more direct relief flowing to families, small businesses, including finishing the job of getting people that $2,000 relief...

The $600 stimulus checks from the latest Covid relief bill are officially on their way to bank accounts, according to two tweets from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday evening. The checks could arrive as early as tonight for those who have direct deposit, according to Mnuchin. Your stimulus check will come this way if you set up direct deposit with the IRS for your 2019 tax return by providing them with your bank account information. If that information has changed, it will delay the receipt of your stimulus check, according to the IRS. Direct deposits will start Tuesday evening...

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1 New on @MSNBC : House Democrats will attempt to pass a stand-alone bill to provide for $2000 direct payments by unanimous consent on Thursday, NBC News reports, citing a senior Democratic aide.

Several members of Congress are taking to social media to complain about the handful of hours they have to read the 5,593-page spending bill. “5600 pages. Votes allegedly in 6 hours,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) wrote on Twitter about the $2.3 trillion bill. “Neither Democrats nor Republicans should vote for this nonsense. There should be bipartisan rejection of this absurdity,” he added. “Just another bill we have to pass before the American people discover all the goodies that special interests jammed into it over the past week,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said: “It’s not good enough to hear about what’s...

​Millions of Americans who qualify for coronavirus relief funds could see payments as soon as next week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday. “The good news is this is a very, very fast way of getting money into the economy. Let me emphasize: People are going to see this money at the beginning of next week,” he said on CNBC. Mnuchin encouraged people who receive the payments — which could be as much as $600 — to spend the money and give the economy a much-needed boost.

"If money really grew on trees, why not give more free money?" Watch...

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be getting a $25,000 pay raise in January 2021, as the state faces a massive $63 billion budget deficit owed to revenue losses tied to the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo’s salary will jump from $225,000 to $250,000 on Jan. 1, 2021 — making him the highest paid governor in the nation. But judges and 213 state lawmakers serving in the state Senate and Assembly didn’t get the green light for their own excepted raises, which have to be approved by the Commission on Legislative, Judicial and Executive Compensation which argued the state is too broke...

Joe Biden will offer his post-pandemic economic plan on Monday as the stock market rose with the news of another potential COVID vaccine and President Donald Trump continues to insist he won the election. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris will speak on their plan to revive the pandemic-battered U.S. economy as stocked soared after drugmaker Moderna said its COVID-19 vaccine is 94.5 percent effective based on preliminary data. His remarks come as talks are stalled between the Trump White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill about another COVID relief package and several states have started to institute new restrictions...

Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, newly-appointed as a senior adviser at the Pentagon, has a track record of making controversial statements. But his most provocative of all might be a proposal to do away with the U.S. Marine Corps. In a 2012 opinion piece for Time Magazine, Macgregor, a decorated veteran of the Gulf War, argued that the Corps was living on its past glories and was unsuited for combat on today's battlefield, with the possible exception for pushover enemies. He went further, too, suggesting the acronym "USMC" should really stand for "Under-utilized Superfluous Military Capability." "Most of today's Marine...

So he couldn't bother doing it to help Trump, he now focuses on it???

President Donald Trump said during a stop on the campaign trail Monday that he will double down on his pro-American domestic policy if he is reelected to a second term in office in November’s election, delivering a promise to “cut middle class taxes even further.” The President’s remarks came during a campaign rally in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, the latest in a series of rallies across the Commonwealth, which is widely viewed as a key battleground state. “And in my second term I will cut middle class taxes even further,” President Trump stated, eliciting uproarious applause from the crowd.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday gave the White House 48 hours to reach a deal on a new coronavirus stimulus plan — saying otherwise Congress will not be able to pass the relief before the November election. “The 48 only relates to if we want to get it done before the election — which we do,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “But we’re saying to them we have to freeze the design on some of these things, are we going with it or not, and what is the language.”

It's a difficult time to be a deficit hawk. In March, Congress passed the CARES Act, named to show what lawmakers on both sides of the aisle wanted to be seen to be doing in the wake of the economic devastation caused by the outbreak of COVID-19. They cared to the tune of about $2.2 trillion, all of it billed to the deficit, making it the single biggest legislative care package in history by a wide margin. It was the first time Congress had ever passed a bill with a trillion-dollar price tag. As a point of comparison, the Affordable...

Senate Republicans and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) raised intense objections Saturday to a new $1.8 trillion economic relief proposal from the Trump administration, greatly dimming prospects for a coronavirus relief deal before the election. On a conference call Saturday morning with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, multiple GOP senators denounced the proposal, attacking the price tag as too big, questioning the overall direction and criticizing individual proposals, according to several people who participated in the call or were briefed on its contents. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the...

Regal Cinemas announced recently that it will temporarily close all 536 of its U.S. locations as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and continues to keep customers away. This move will affect approximately 40,000 employees across the country. And yet, nobody in Congress is talking about a bailout for Regal. Now compare that with the airline industry. The airlines received a $50 billion bailout in April of this year, with $25 billion in subsidized loans and $25 billion meant to keep most airline workers employed until the end of September. As predicted, since consumers weren't ready to fly yet, this taxpayer-funded...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy? @MarkMeadows @senatemajldr @kevinomccarthy @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer 9:18 PM · Oct 6, 2020

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday again blasted the federal government for failing to provide relief for state and local governments amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, saying New York City’s deficit is “Donald Trump’s deficit.” “We have tremendous losses because of COVID, we're not liable for them,” Cuomo said. New York City has a $9 billion budget deficit and the state’s is $30 billion. “I’m not accepting liability,” Cuomo continued. “I'm not accepting the premise that New York City or New York State should pay.”

... The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania a number of years ago developed a comprehensive and substantive platform for evaluating the federal budget. This model was built so that those who govern and those who are governed could have an accurate and reasonably unbiased analysis of federal fiscal activities. It is one of the most useful and effective tools around for figuring out just what the federal government and the various players who lead it in the Democratic and Republican parties are really up to. The conclusion, after reviewing the opening bids put forward by Biden and his...

The national debt has reached levels not seen since the end of World War II, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is calling for a combination of spending increases and tax hikes that will require trillions of dollars of additional borrowing in the next 10 years. Biden is calling for more than $3 trillion in new taxes that would be imposed primarily on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. But two recent analyses of Biden's spending plans agree that his proposals would not come close to paying for themselves over 10 years. If enacted, Biden's plans would push federal spending to...

The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit will hit $3.3 trillion this year. The national debt will exceed the size of America's gross domestic product for the first time since the end of World War II.When the federal government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September, America's national debt will nearly match the size of the nation's economy for the first time since the end of World War II, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The national debt will equal 98 percent of America's gross domestic product, a rough measurement of the size of the...