Patriotic Millionaires Chair: Senate GOP Covid Bill Would Plunge the United States into a Prolonged Recession

“The authors and supporters of this bill should be embarrassed by how little it does to help the American people”

Washington, DC – This evening, Senate Republicans revealed details of their fourth coronavirus relief bill, the HEALS Act. In response to this unveiling of the bill, Morris Pearl, former managing director at Blackrock, Inc. and Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, issued the following statement:

“The Senate Republican coronavirus bill is an insufficient response to the unprecedented crisis the United States is facing. The authors and supporters of this bill should be embarrassed by how little it does to help the American people. This bill would allow tens of millions of Americans to fall into poverty and plunge the United States into a prolonged depression.

There is no funding for state and local governments. There is no protection from evictions for the tens of millions of Americans whose landlords benefit from taxpayer subsidised mortgages and who are at risk of being evicted from their homes in just the next few weeks.

This bill is a profoundly unserious attempt at governance. Its authors didn’t concern themselves with what the American people need, they focused on doing the least they possibly could while telling voters they tried, because within their moral framework the poor deserve to be punished for their lack of success.

With unemployment spiking in recent weeks and four unemployed Americans for every one job opening, the theory that Americans are cheating the system and deliberately being unemployed is ridiculous. Cutting unemployment benefits will not put people back to work, it will reduce millions to poverty and actually end up costing the country even more jobs as unemployed workers lose their ability to spend money in their local businesses.

The bill’s priorities are completely skewed. Cutting taxes won’t help struggling small businesses who are now operating at a loss, with no profits to pay taxes on in the first place. The bill’s focus on protecting businesses from all liability is ridiculous, and requiring workers to prove that their employers knew that their working conditions were unsafe is an unreasonable burden.”

For further comments or questions, please contact Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org.

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About the Patriotic Millionaires

Proud “traitors to their class,” members of the Patriotic Millionaires are high-net worth Americans, business leaders, and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. The mission of The Patriotic Millionaires organization is to build a more stable, prosperous, and inclusive nation by promoting public policies based on the “first principles” of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system. You can find out more at https://patrioticmillionaires.org/about/

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