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A bipartisan coalition of senators is in early talks to pass another coronavirus pandemic relief package costing as much as $68 billion, a Wednesday report claimed. An early version of the legislation appears targeted primarily at businesses currently ailing as the Omicron variant continues to fuel a new wave of infections. That includes restaurants, performance venues, gyms and minor league sports teams, according to the Washington Post. The discussions in the Senate are reportedly being led by Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi. GOP Senator Susan Collins, as well as Democrats Mark Warner and Maria...

The Senate approved the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package Saturday on a party-line vote.All 50 Democrats voted for the relief bill while all Republicans but one absent voted against the bill. The bill, also known as the American Rescue Plan or H.R. 1319, was passed by the House on Feb. 27 by a vote of 219–212, with all Republicans and two Democrats voting against it. The Senate was able to pass the bill after several amendments. The bill will be returned to the House for reconciliation which is expected to happen early next week. The amendments adopted by the Senate...

House Democrats' latest coronavirus relief proposal unveiled Tuesday includes more than $3 trillion in new spending, amounting to the biggest and most expensive aid package yet to deal with the global pandemic, Fox News has learned. Of the more than $3 trillion package, about $1 trillion would go to state, local and tribal governments, according to three sources briefed on the proposal. Another round of $1,200 stimulus payments also would go out to most Americans under the plan, with a maximum of $6,000 per household.

While it looks like everyone is taking seriously the average worker’s needs, no one at the decision-making level has thought of the small business owner. If you’re a small business owner like I am, you’ve been closely following the stimulus efforts of the federal government, looking for a lifeline out of the mess of delayed payments, lost revenue, and furloughed employees. Unfortunately, while it looks as though everyone is taking seriously the average worker’s needs, no one at the decision-making level has thought of the small business owner. Congress passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act on March 18, providing...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hit the brakes Tuesday on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) plan to move ahead with a phase-four stimulus package that would include major infrastructure spending and other Democratic priorities. “I think we need to wait a few days here, a few weeks, and see how things are working out,” McConnell said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “Let’s see how things are going and respond accordingly,” he added. “I’m not going to allow this to be an opportunity for the Democrats to achieve unrelated policy items that they would not otherwise be able to pass.” McConnell's...

A Global Pandemic Go To Waste The coronavirus relief bill congressional Democrats are pushing has all the hallmarks of Obama’s 2009 stimulus package: welfare funding disguised as relief. So it turns out the real reason congressional Democrats blocked a Senate coronavirus spending bill on Sunday wasn’t because they were concerned it favored corporations over individuals or because they wanted more direct aid to families and small businesses. It was because they want to use this crisis as pretext for passing a bunch of Democratic policies that have nothing to do with the pandemic.On Monday, right around the time Senate Democrats...

After a bumpy few weeks, the Trump administration has found a firm footing in its response to Chinese Virus.After a bumpy couple of weeks, approval of President Trump’s handling of the Chinese Virus has been on the rise according to two new polls. A new Ipsos/ABC poll released Friday shows 55 percent of Americans approve of the president’s response with 43 percent disapproving. A similar Harris poll found 56 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval.Just a week ago the Ipsos numbers were essentially reversed with approval hovering in the low 40s. In the early days of the Chinese Virus...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — An online dating website which bills itself as “The World’s Largest Sugar Daddy Dating Website” says it has recorded a 50 percent jump in average daily sign-ups since the start of the government shutdown. SeekingArrangement.com claims its traffic has seen a dramatic rise in people seeking “sugar daddy’s,” which Merriam-Webster defines as: “A well-to-do usually older man who supports or spends lavishly on a mistress, girlfriend, or boyfriend.” Similarly, WhatsYourPrice.com – which allows first-dates to the highest bidder – has reported a similar massive increase in daily signups since last Sunday despite the fall typically being a...

Among the analyses of the White House’s recent anti-foreclosure resolution with the banks, most critics are calling it a case study in politics, publicity or pandering. No matter how you slice it, they all say the law is pathetic...

José Andujar, 43, was busted last Friday in Times Square for selling his "Obama" condoms -- his third arrest in a year for unlicensed peddling, cops said. The arrest came despite a State Supreme Court justice ruling that his rubbers are protected by the Constitution's guarantee of free speech. The decision said that the condom wrappers should be treated like books, which do not require a vending license.

It’s easy to joke about the absurdity of stimulus funds gone awry, but every dollar was earned by the sweat of someone else’s brow. When you hear of a Kentucky furnace—unused for almost 140 years—getting close to a million dollars cumulative for restoration, you might go huh? All there is to show for the money is a roof and corner stabilization, and admittedly, most of the money was ‘lost’ due to ‘bad stewardship’. But that’s nothing compared to the quarter million dollar study of the effect of cocaine on monkeys and the sex drive of Japanese quail. Then there’s a...

Citing what he believes are clear signs the economy is bouncing back from recession, Vice-President Joe Biden yesterday touted Barack Obama's 'stimulus package' and bailout of Wall Street. Time for yet another fact-check on the pathological liars of the Obama Administration. Banks are failing at double the rate of last year. During 2009, which the government claims was the peak of the recession, the total number of bank failures at this point in the year was 40. It is already 83 for this year. Yet the FDIC is running ads on radio stations across the country attempting to scare people...

... "I had never missed a payment and I had never been late on a mortgage payment. For the next three months, I sent in my monthly mortgage payment, which reflected the verbal agreement I made with Citibank. After a three month period, I began receiving documents which gave the appearance I was in the process of negotiating for the reduction in my mortgage payments--when I was led to believe back in June, I was meeting my responsibilities regarding the re-financing of my mortgage I had agreed to with Citibank. After a two month period of a back and forth...

GOP senators on Tuesday highlighted “pure waste” in the billions of stimulus funds spent this year, including money for fossil research in Argentina, puppet shows and to protect cruise ships from terrorist attacks. The Obama administration has spent $217 billion in economic stimulus funds as of the end of November. A new report issued Tuesday by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.), the ranking Republican on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, concluded that $7 billion was wasted or mismanaged. At the top of the GOP list of wasteful projects is a $5 million grant from the Department...

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time. Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime? Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime; Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime? Forget about the Great Recession. Pay no heed to home foreclosures. Ignore double digit unemployment.The stimulus package is working! That is thrust of a New York Times article written from the alternate economic universe. Here is the happy face appraisal of the stimulus package...

To hear President Obama tell it, he's been busy creating jobs since taking office. The $787 billion stimulus package, he said last winter, would "save or create 3.5 million jobs." The White House is touting reports from recipients of stimulus funds asserting that they have created or saved 640,000 jobs so far. Yet the national unemployment rate has now hit 10.2 percent, helping explain why Republicans won the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey last week, just a year after the party's 2008 drubbing. And Obama declared Friday that more action is needed. "History tells us that job growth...

WASHINGTON — It's about to become official: The recession is over — but not the pain. The government will release figures this week expected to show that the economy has awakened from its deepest slump since the 1930s and is in the early stages of a recovery. But the following week, the government will issue another set of figures expected to show unemployment continuing to rise toward and possibly above a clearly recessionary 10 percent. How can both be possible? The government releases third-quarter Gross Domestic Product figures on Thursday. Many forecasters say they will show GDP growing at an...

The Department of Defense awarded nearly $30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation on suspicion of defrauding the government.According to Air Force documents, the companies claimed to be small, minority-owned businesses, which allowed them to gain special preference in bidding for government contracts. But investigators found that they were all part of a larger minority-owned enterprise in Southern California, making them ineligible for the contracts. Contractor Database [1]Search for companies near you that got stimulus transportation contracts. The Air Force and the Army awarded the companies 112 stimulus projects at U.S. military...

Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised the federal economic recovery package Wednesday, saying it had saved more than 1,600 jobs in Orange County's public school system alone and 26,000 education jobs across Florida. Speaking at Jackson Middle in Orlando, the two called public school teachers the key to improving the country's economic situation and said many already do excellent work. But they also said that President Barack Obama's administration isn't interested in maintaining the status quo but instead wants to use the unprecedented resources now available as part of the recovery act -- some...

Michigan State Budget Shortfall May Result In Tax Increases The state collected $150 million less in May, June and July than fiscal analysts projected as part of the May Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference (CREC), according to numbers released last week Tuesday by the House Fiscal Agency (HFA). That means a bigger problem next year, but not necessarily more budget cuts for this fiscal year. The state still shouldn't have a problem balancing its books in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, thanks to a cushion created by leftover federal stimulus money. But fiscal 2010 is a different story.