The faltering economy continues to weaken, with real unemployment over 11%, with as many as 26 million Americans still jobless. A jobs report late last week found that the economy has at least 11 million fewer jobs now than at the end of last year, a far bigger jobs loss than even the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
Meanwhile, a second wave of coronavirus is killing nearly a thousand Americans each week. COVID cases have risen in 33 states in the last month and more than a dozen states have reported increased hospitalizations in every region of the country as part of a “ominous national trend.” Already, 7.5 million Americans have contracted COVID, and more than 210,000 have been killed.
Normally reserved Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has become uncharacteristically blunt, telling Congress recently that economic recovery “will depend on keeping the virus under control, and on policy actions taken at all levels of government.” Powell has specifically urged passage of a long-delayed congressional economic stimulus and COVID relief package.
But in more than three months since House Democrats passed comprehensive economic and COVID recovery legislation, Trump and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have failed to enact a robust economic relief and stimulus package.
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