Quick Take updates to earlier posts:
The Washington Post reports, Protective gear in national stockpile is nearly depleted, DHS officials say:
The government’s emergency stockpile of respirator masks, gloves and other medical supplies is running low and is nearly exhausted due to the coronavirus outbreak, leaving the Trump administration and the states to compete for personal protective equipment in a freewheeling global marketplace rife with profiteering and price-gouging, according to Department of Homeland Security officials involved in the frantic acquisition effort.
As coronavirus hot spots flare from coast to coast, the demand for safety equipment — also known as personal protective equipment (PPE) — is both immediate and widespread, with health officials, hospital executives and governors saying that their shortages are critical and that health-care workers are putting their lives at risk while trying to help the surging number of patients.
Two DHS officials said the stores kept in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Strategic National Stockpile are nearly gone.
Hospitals and states face a real risk of running out of supplies, one of the officials said. “If you can’t protect the people taking care of us, it gets ugly.”
The New York Times reports, A Ventilator Stockpile, With One Hitch: Thousands Do Not Work:
President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive.
But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway.
The revelation came in response to inquiries to the Department of Health and Human Services after state officials reported that some of the ventilators they received were not operational, stoking speculation that the administration had not kept up with the task of maintaining the stockpile.
In fact, the contract with a company that was maintaining the machines expired at the end of last summer, and a contract protest delayed handing the job to Agiliti, a Minneapolis-based provider of medical equipment services and maintenance. Agiliti was not given the $38 million task until late January, when the scope of the global coronavirus crisis was first becoming clear.
lt is not known whether problems with the ventilators predated the contract lapse, but maintenance of the machines did halt. That delay may become a potentially deadly lapse.
NBC News reports, Projected ventilator demand ‘outstrips the capacity’ of national stockpile, FEMA tells Congress:
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials told members of Congress earlier this week that the projected demand for ventilators required for coronavirus-stricken patients “outstrips the capacity” of the Strategic National Stockpile, the House Oversight Committee said Thursday.
In a March 30 meeting, FEMA officials told members of the Democratic-led committee that there were 9,500 ventilators left in the Strategic National Stockpile, with another 3,200 expected to be acquired by April 13, the panel’s Democrats said in a release.
That would fall far short of the amount requested in just New York State, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said first responders expect to need between 30,000 and 40,000 ventilators in the next two weeks. Federal officials have already sent over 4,000 ventilators to the state.
President Donald Trump has said that help is on the way in the form of 100,000 ventilators that are being manufactured, but FEMA officials said the bulk of those would not be available “until late June at the earliest,” the release said. On Thursday, Trump announced he was using the Defense Production Act to help the companies making the ventilators get the supplies they need speed up production.
For those of you keeping score at home, “the end of June at the earliest” would be well after the administration’s own projections for the peak of the coronavirus surge in deaths in coming weeks. Help is not on the way. The administration’s projection is overly optimistic without these ventilators available now.
New York Magazine reports, Trump Refused to Order Coronavirus Supplies Because Big Business Complained:
President Trump’s reluctance to use the Defense Production Act has been one of the most enduring mysteries of the coronavirus epidemic.
[T]he New York Times resolves the mystery. Trump has refused to invoke the act because big business doesn’t want him to. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the heads of major corporations have lobbied the administration against using the act,” the Times reports. “They say the move could prove counterproductive, imposing red tape on companies precisely when they need flexibility to deal with closed borders and shuttered factories.” Trump, Lawrence Kudlow, and Jared Kushner all reportedly found these arguments persuasive.
Of course, persuading that troika does not necessarily require a solid factual basis. Kudlow is a fanatical adherent of supply-side economics whose career of wrongness has been sustained by a willingness to advance the narrow interests of the superrich. Kushner is a dilettante heir to his father’s shady construction empire. Trump is … also that, but less intelligent than Kushner.
The latest unemployment numbers are out today, and it’s a new weekly record. Vox.com reports, New unemployment claims surge to record-high 6.6 million:
The US Department of Labor registered more than 6.6 million initial unemployment insurance claims for the week ending March 28, according to data newly reported on Thursday morning.
That easily surpasses the previous record, set in last Thursday’s release, which in turn shattered all previous records for initial unemployment filings. And there’s little reason to believe that next week’s report will be any better, with several large states including Georgia and Florida only now moving to adopt the kind of shutdown policies that began on the West Coast earlier in March.
To the best of our knowledge (the official unemployment numbers for March won’t come out until Friday, and they won’t properly account for the layoffs in the final week of the month), this is not yet the highest level of actual unemployment in recent history, with the Great Recession and the brief but intense recession of the early 1980s both seeing double-digit unemployment rates. But the high unemployment of those recessions reflected the accretion of months of job losses.
This time around, the American job market was, as recently as the second week of March, totally fine. (The unemployment rate in February was 3.5 percent.) And then it began to unravel at a shocking pace, with huge swaths of the retail, food service, hospitality, and transportation industries shutting down.
If you were expecting that coronavirus relief check to help you pay for your living expenses this month after the government ordered your employer to shut down and you to stay at home, some bad news for those of you who do not have direct deposit on file with the IRS.
NBC News reports, Many Americans may have to wait months for coronavirus relief checks:
The first Americans to get relief payments from the government under the coronavirus legislation signed into law last month won’t see the money until at least the week of April 13, according to new estimates from the Trump administration provided to House Democrats and outlined in a memo circulated this week by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Many people who don’t have direct deposit information on file with the IRS might have to wait months to get the money.
The memo, obtained by NBC News, says that Americans who have their direct deposit information on file will receive their payments in mid-April, “likely” the week of April 13. The document estimates that about 60 million Americans will receive checks at that point.
About three weeks after those deposits go out, the IRS will start issuing paper checks, likely the week of May 4, according to the memo. The office that issues paper checks can process about 5 million checks per week, so it could take 20 weeks – nearly 5 months – to get them all out.
According to the IRS Fact Sheet Economic impact payments: What you need to know:
How will the IRS know where to send my payment?
The vast majority of people do not need to take any action. The IRS will calculate and automatically send the economic impact payment to those eligible.
For people who have already filed their 2019 tax returns, the IRS will use this information to calculate the payment amount. For those who have not yet filed their return for 2019, the IRS will use information from their 2018 tax filing to calculate the payment. The economic impact payment will be deposited directly into the same banking account reflected on the return filed.
The IRS does not have my direct deposit information. What can I do?
In the coming weeks, Treasury plans to develop a web-based portal for individuals to provide their banking information to the IRS online, so that individuals can receive payments immediately as opposed to checks in the mail.
Once the IRS has this portal, you may be able to speed up that payment after you have provided your banking information to the IRS.
And for those of you who do not earn enough income to have to file a tax return? New York Magazine reports:
There’s also the concern of those Americans who have not filed taxes in recent years: The IRS estimates that around 30 to 40 million adults, about 15 percent of the population, don’t file tax returns; many of these individuals are exempt because they do not earn enough to qualify for federal income taxes. (For Americans who have not filed tax returns in the past two years, the IRS instructed them to fill out a “simple” tax return, which will be available soon.)
- Not currently available online.
Joan McCarter at Daily Kos adds, Seniors won’t have to file tax returns for stimulus check, but some disabled and veterans will:
The Treasury Department has partially reversed their initial decision to throw up unnecessary bureaucratic hoops for seniors obtaining the $1,200 one-time stimulus payment. Originally the administration was going to require them, as well as disabled people on Supplemental Security Income and veterans receiving pensions, to file tax returns in order to get the check. They’ve relented following mass outrage, at least for seniors. But not for SSI recipients and veterans, unless they also receive Social Security.
“This is entirely unacceptable,” Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, said in a statement Thursday. “Our government has the tools to send these groups, who are among the poorest and most vulnerable in America, their benefits automatically. It must reverse this part of its misguided policy, as well, and prioritize these payments, too.” Rep. Jan Schakowsky and her fellow House Democrats agree. They are calling on the Treasury to “IMMEDIATELY ensure all older Americans, can automatically get the stimulus checks they need to survive the #COVID19 crisis.”
“They’re still requiring SSI recipients and veterans receiving pensions to file a tax return before receiving their #coronavirus stimulus payments,” Schakowsky tweeted. “That burden is unacceptable.” The burden is very real because right now in-person assistance isn’t available. Right now the online filing system at the IRS isn’t allowing people to file online because they don’t have taxable income.
[T]here are still many enrolled in SSI and veterans benefits who shouldn’t have to face this mess. It’s not a hurdle that the Treasury can’t overcome, says Chuck Marr, a tax expert at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Treasury and the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration can match data to determine those SSI and veterans beneficiaries who are not part of a tax filing unit and then issue them automatic payments,” Marr told HuffPost.
The IRS will post all key information on IRS.gov/coronavirus as soon as it becomes available.