Paul Krugman is at his best taking on Republican bad faith regarding the Rescue Bill in a most excellent column today, backed up with an additional backgrounder to his email list.
We need to go ahead with the $1.9T House rescue plan now, there is virtually no danger of it being too large and causing inflation, that can be tweaked later with monetary policy, meanwhile the present and greater danger is that it will be too small, and too late for some.
This is not just $1400 checks, this is aid to crumbling state governments which cannot run deficits and are out of cash now, and extending unemployment insurance.
And despite Krugman not previously raising hell over how Democrats dialed back the promised $2000 checks to $1400 by counting the December-passed portion as down payment, though he could have used the same argument (greater danger is that it will be too small...). Krugman has argued, same as Biden, that the personal check portion is the least important.
Nobody but me seems to notice how means testing the personal checks are based on old data...2019 income...which does not reflect pandemic losses. Progressives like AOC continue to argue that the payments should be for Everyone (not means tested). And monthly! David Sirota has argued that means testing is a another blast of neoliberalism like ACA which makes the Democratic Party less popular. Sirota also strongly opposed reducing the checks from $2000.
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