Pandemic unemployment benefits in the United States just expired over the three-day Labor Day weekend. And the Biden Administration is leaving millions of Americans high and dry, without any certainty about how they’ll pay their bills or even keep their homes.
One think tank estimated the ending benefits would affect some 7.5 million Americans. The expiring programs include the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation for gig workers like Uber drivers and online freelance digital economy workers.
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” – President Ronald Reagan
The end of federal pandemic assistance for the unemployed could not have come at a worse time for millions of Americans still struggling with the fallout from last year’s near-total pause on normal economic and social activities. And as the New York Times noted, it’s happening without any pushback from the Biden Administration to help the country that voted for him.
Eviction protections under the national eviction moratorium ended on July 31. That means landlords can now evict tenants for non-payment of rent. Many of them have months of back rent to pay and no way to come up with the money in time to avoid losing a place to live.
Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, states that 16 states have spent less than 5% of their share of the $45 billion Congress earmarked for rental assistance to help tenants and landlords make ends meet.
Minnesota has spent only 13% of the $375 million Congress allotted the land of 10,000 lakes for Covid rental relief. That’s your tax dollars, elected officials, and government bureaucrats hard at work.
Even with trillions of dollars in Federal Reserve liquidity for big money markets, and trillions in spending from Congress, the economy is reeling from the damage done by the government and news industry’s history-making blunders in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
There are currently still 5.3 million fewer people working in the United States than before the pandemic. Policymakers are hoping an end to unemployment benefits will get them back to work. Goldman Sachs projects 1.5 million Americans will reenter the workforce by the end of the year because of the expiring unemployment benefits.
But they won’t if the economy doesn’t have jobs for them. Hundreds of thousands of small enterprises have closed due to the disruption put on the globe by politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and influencers in 2020.
As pandemic financial assistance to millions of Americans ends, the economic and personal hardships created by policymakers overreacting to the coronavirus are far from over.
The drastic, constitutionally dubious, and often nonsensical measures taken against the coronavirus show no signs of letting up. And they continue to wreak havoc on the economy.
