March, 26 2020, 12:00am EDT
Senate Coronavirus Bill Prioritizes $500 Billion Mnuchin-Trump Slush Fund Over American Lives
"This is nowhere even in the realm of adequate oversight."
WASHINGTON
Last night, the Senate voted unanimously to pass a $2 trillion economic stimulus package in response to the rapidly escalating COVID-19 crisis. This package includes a provision for a nearly $500 billion fund for stimulus distributions to corporations at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Steven Mnuchin with sharply limited oversight and weak enforcement mechanisms for holding the Secretary accountable. The House has yet to vote on this version of the package.
In response, Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc., issued the following statement:
"Though Senate Democrats have said that they successfully negotiated adequate oversight for this money, I have a different definition of adequate. Under the bill as it stands, Secretary Mnuchin would have nearly free rein to use that $500 billion to bail out any corporation he pleases, with almost no conditions, and would merely have to "make himself available" to testify before Congress on those decisions after the fact. The most absurd part is that there is nothing that would require these companies to retain their workers in exchange for a bailout.
Anyone familiar with Secretary Mnuchin's record of padding the pockets of his rich friends, and the Trump administration's long and storied history of self-enrichment, should know this is nowhere even in the realm of adequate oversight. In what world does it seem like good economic practice to hand half a trillion dollars in taxpayer money to Secretary Mnuchin, a man whose only previous political achievement was helping pass a nearly $2 trillion tax cut for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations?
Instead of forcing American taxpayers to spend $500 billion subsidizing a fund for Secretary Mnuchin, that money would be far better spent going directly back to the people, by ensuring financial security for poor and middle-class Americans in the months it will take to be rid of this disease. Our economy can survive without a few more corporate bailouts at the whims of the Trump administration, but it cannot survive millions of people who need to work for a living becoming destitute. We need to do more for working people right now, not waste time and taxpayer money on a slush fund for rich business owners."
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
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Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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