current headline story @ Politico:  Pelosi eyes combining Covid aid with mammoth spending deal

She said Mitch McConnell also agrees on pairing the two together

By CAITLIN EMMA and HEATHER CAYGLE Updated: 12/04/2020 04:12 PM EST​

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she wants to attach a coronavirus relief bill to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package that would avert a government shutdown later this month, raising the prospects of long-stalled stimulus relief finally being signed into law.

The California Democrat said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed with her about combining the annual spending measures with coronavirus relief during their conversation Thursday, the first time in weeks the two leaders have discussed moving a relief bill.

“That would be a hope, because that is the vehicle leaving the station,” Pelosi said of attaching pandemic aid to a must-pass fiscal 2021 funding package during her weekly press conference. “We would want a big, strong vote.”

Pelosi said the $908 billion proposal released this week by a centrist group of Senate and House members helped restart the stimulus talks, which fell apart just before the election after months of dragging on with little real movement.

“There is momentum — there is momentum with the action that the senators and House members in a bipartisan way have taken,” Pelosi said Friday, in the latest sign that negotiators are closing in on a deal. “The tone of our conversations is one that is indicative of the decision to get the job done.”

President-elect Joe Biden on Friday said he’s “encouraged" by the $908 billion proposal, framing it as the type of bipartisan work that he hopes to foster as president. He cautioned that “any package passed in the lame duck session is not going to be enough overall.”

But hurdles remain. Government funding runs out in just one week [....]

Rep. Swalwell:

Nothing in the federal aid package will directly address a looming housing crisis when the national eviction moratorium ends.

BronxWorks, a human services nonprofit, says the average person seeking its help with housing issues owes between $8,000 and $11,000 in rent. Executive Director Eileen Torres says it’s not unusual for clients to be behind $20,000 and a handful more than $30,000 in debt to their landlords.

“We’re extremely concerned about what will happen if we don’t see meaningful rent relief that can cover large arrears,” said Torres. “After nine months of this crisis, our community is still struggling, and mass evictions will put recovery out of reach for years to come.

 from

What it would really take to save the economy

About four times what Congress is currently proposing, according to one estimate.

By Emily Stewart @ Vox.com,  Dec 8, 2020

[....] The latest bipartisan offer on the table in Congress is a $908 billion stimulus bill. It’s a substantial number that’s about $500 billion more than Republicans recently proposed. But according to a new paper from economists Adam Hersh and Mark Paul commissioned by the Groundwork Collaborative — a progressive economic think tank — really reviving the United States economy could require three, even four times that: The pair estimates Congress would need to pass $3 to $4.5 trillion in economic relief in the near term to get the economy to reach its full potential.

“Economics has given us all the tools we need to address the crisis, and we just need the policymakers to open up the checkbooks of the US government,” said Paul, a political economist at the New College of Florida and a Roosevelt Institute fellow.

While the Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary measures, such as [...]