COVID19 Update - Day 150

US Tests: 60,146,707*
US Cases: 4,909,375*

US Deaths: 152,791*

Worldwide Cases: 19,282,972*

Worldwide Deaths: 718,851*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

Coronavirus deaths are ringing in at more than 1,000 per day.  Unemployment is running at over 10%.  People are getting evicted, and more financial financial assistance is desperately needed.

At the moment, it's not happening, because Trump and the GOP are demanding a spending limit $2 trillion below the amount specified in the HEROES bill House Democrats passed on May 15.  Even after Democrats offered to meet the GOP halfway --- offering to reduce spending by $1 trillion --- Republicans remained intransigent.  Apparently the GOP strategy now is for Trump to rule by executive order:

Democrats insisted they were still open to negotiations and said they had already tried to make concessions, but White House officials suggested that — absent a dramatically new approach from the Democrats — they were done trying to craft a deal and wanted to move ahead with the executive orders.

“The president would like us to make a deal, but unfortunately we did not make any progress today,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday after he and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows met for the fifth day in a row with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the Capitol.

“At this point we are going to recommend to the president that over the weekend we move forward with some executive actions,” Mnuchin said.

Among other things, White House officials are looking at moving funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency into a program that could pay jobless benefits, people briefed on the discussions said.

Democrats said Friday that they had offered to reduce the price tag of their $3.4 trillion bill by $1 trillion, but that administration officials rejected the offer. Republicans dismissed the Democrats’ offer as budget gimmickry because they achieved the price reduction largely by shortening the time frame of proposed benefits, not by reducing specific demands. The Democrats’ demand for nearly $1 trillion in state and local aid remained a major sticking point. Trump has mischaracterized the Democrats’ demand, repeatedly, however, as many states run by Republican governors are also seeking assistance.

So to recap: Democrats passed a bill THREE MONTHS AGO which includes a moratorium on evictions, extended unemployment benefits, $10,000 in student debt cancellation, an increase in SNAP benefits, a reopening of enrollment into Obamacare and the state exchanges, provisions to protect our elections, $25 billion in funding for the Post Office, and $1 trillion in aid for state and local governments.

Republicans, in the meantime, have passed nothing, but have talked about legislation with provisions that include a liability shield for businesses, so that workers and customers can't sue them, and deferring payroll taxes --- a measure which would provide limited relief to working Americans, and no relief at all to the unemployed.

Republicans really have no interest in solving problems for Americans, and thus there's no reason to allow them to hold public office.