ComingTogether Plan

Another bad short-term response to long-term issues. The massive bill was passed Monday that is being referred to in the media as a stimulus bill. It seems like the 116th Congress is trying to recover from their appalling lack of productivity over the last two years all in one 5500 page bill.

The two lead items in most reports are a $600 per person payment and another temporary increase in unemployment benefits – both requiring people to be unproductive in order to obtain the money. The means testing of benefits has got to go to incentivize productivity.

It is sad that this is just temporary  support offered the citizens of this country, when this current situation is a chance to meaningfully reform government benefits. For the 54 million people that are considered “food insecure”, how long will $600 last? We need to decide as a country that no citizen is to go hungry. To do that, let’s provide a food benefit to every citizen. No waiting for some bureaucrat to decide you are worthy. No insecurity that you might do some otherwise reasonable activity that terminates the benefits.

A third flaw is found in the moratorium on evictions. It is not that we do not want people to be housed. The complaint is that this provision is an unfunded mandate that causes a significant burden on landlords. This moratorium means that those providing housing have to continue providing it whether they are paid or not. It is probably already too difficult to evict for nonpayment, but this makes it worse. Now, how many people considering going into the housing rental business will decide that is a bad idea, since renters do not need to pay. Once this precedent has been set, expect less housing to be available, particularly at reasonable pricing — not the desired outcome. Again, we do not want to see any citizen without housing, so let’s provide a housing benefit for every citizen. Then landlords know that a certain amount of money will be available to pay rent.

Update 12/23/2020: The President agrees with this article that $600 per person is inadequate. He proposes amending the bill to provide $2,000. Rather than increasing the amount, how about making this a monthly payment and eliminate the means testing? That would eliminate the “food insecurity”. It could provide some protection to landlords by requiring that part of this money be used for rent, say ½ or ⅔, to obtain a deferral of eviction.