‘Save by the bell’

 

“When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.”

—Calvin Coolidge

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

VIRGILIO will turn 65 in April 2021, and he has stopped working since March 2020 when the restaurant, where he worked in Manhattan in New York City for the last four years, stopped its operation because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The former refrigerator repairman from Calatrava, Negros Occidental has been a recipient of the Department of Labor’s Pandemic Unemployment Insurance (PUI): $600 a week for four months (April-July 2020) from the federal government and around $400 from the New York state government (April 2020 until March 2021).

“Sarap ng buhay (life is enjoyable),” averred Virgilio, divorced from his first wife, Natty, 62, and is now married to a former school teacher from Pasig, Metro Manila in the Philippines, Yolly, 55.

He has no children from both women.

Virgilio said he doesn’t need to go back to work even if the pandemic will be gone because he can wait until his retirement in April 2021.

By that time, he isn’t anymore qualified to receive a PUI; the additional PUI ($300 a week until March 14) contained in the $2.3 trillion package that combines COVID-19 relief with government funding signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 27, will stop.

“Marami nga ang nagsasabi na ako na raw ang pinaka buenas sa lahat nang mga unemployed sa U.S. ngayon (Many people are saying of all the unemployed in the U.S. today, I’m the luckiest),” Virgilio beamed with a guffaw.

 

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He wasn’t bothered, he said, when it was reported two days earlier that Mr. Trump didn’t immediately sign the bill passed in congress recently before the President went to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for a Christmas break “dahil may pondo panaman ako (because I still have extra money).” 

But Virgilio considered Mr. Trump’s backpedaling on the issue that kept unemployed Americans hanging as “saved by the bell.”

The President’s last-minute decision, coming after he caused days of legislative chaos by lacerating a bill his own aides had negotiated, will restore enhanced unemployment assistance that expired December 27 and avert a shutdown that would have begun December 29. 

The bill, the result of protracted negotiations between the parties and the Trump administration — which Trump largely sat out—includes a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package to extend the unemployment benefits: $114 to $357 weekly payments to unemployed gig workers and self-employed people whose businesses have stalled. 

The funds have been reportedly a lifeline for 7.3 million Americans out of work because of the coronavirus.

The package also extends the federal moratorium on evictions, which was set to expire December 31. 

Without the extension, millions of people reportedly faced immediate housing crises.

 

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According to NBC News, the legislation also funds the federal government through September. 

Congress passed the bill with strong bipartisan support late December 21, but Trump upended the consensus by suddenly raising an objection to the size of a new round of direct payments, which came as news to his aides who had negotiated them with Congress.

He demanded that lawmakers raise the amount to $2,000 and criticized other elements, which he called "pork," in the mammoth spending package, including routine annual foreign aid payments. Trump reiterated his criticism Saturday, tweeting, "I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill."

The COVID-19 aid package includes additional assistance for small businesses and $600 in direct payments to Americans who earned less than $75,000 in the previous tax year.

The amount represented a compromise between Democrats, who wanted larger checks, and Republicans, many of whom opposed additional direct payments.

 

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Last week, Mr. Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities, in part because of his frustration over Section 230, a law that shields internet companies from liability for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties. 

The House was expected to act December 28 to override Trump's veto. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has suggested many Republicans won't vote to override Mr. Trump's veto, despite having voted for the bill itself, so it's unclear as of this writing if the override attempt will be successful or if the veto will stand.

Trump also said in his December 27 statement that he would submit a request for Congress to cut specific spending items in the Covid relief and government funding package, a nod to his litany of complaints about foreign aid. 

Beyond freezing new spending on the specified items for a period of 45 days, that request will have no meaningful effect. 

Mr. Trump will be out of office before Congress could act on any of his requests.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)