New federal COVID stimulus package could help in short term; longer-term impact less clear
By Sarah Downey
As final agreements on the new COVID-19 stimulus package were negotiated last week, crucial help for businesses and families was approved alongside projects having less to do with economic recovery.
“The new relief package reminds me of the lyric from the Who, ‘Meet the new boss same as the old boss’ – just like the first package, there are some necessary expenditures mixed in with all sorts of waste and pork,” Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., senior fellow in business and economics at the Pacific Research Institute, told the Northern California Record by email. “For instance, why is the extension of the subsidies for wind and solar power included in the Covid relief bill? Why do people who have not lost their job or lost any income need ‘stimulus payments’”?
Payments of $600 were scheduled for distribution by the IRS.
“Expenditures like these are generating a large bill that we will be paying for many years in the future while creating no benefit in the here and now,” Winegarden said . . .
