After congressional leaders failed to negotiate yet another coronavirus relief bill, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to provide some of the relief himself, Fox News reported Saturday.
According to Fox, one of the orders would boost state unemployment benefits by an additional $400 per week, less than the $600 per week that expired at the end of July, but more than Senate Republicans had proposed.
Another order suspended the payroll tax for working Americans making less than $100,000 annually retroactive to July 1, Fox noted.
Other orders extended a moratorium on evictions and continued protections for student loan borrowers to defer payments and forgive interest, according to Fox.
Trump blames Democrats
Trump had blamed Democrats for holding up the relief bill while trying to get taxpayer money to bail out cities and states that were in trouble before the coronavirus outbreak, as well as money for a number of other radical-left priorities, Fox noted.
For their part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called Trump’s orders “meager” and accused him of hiding on his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the orders were signed.
“Today’s meager announcements by the president show President Trump still does not comprehend the seriousness or the urgency of the health and economic crises facing working families,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement Saturday, according to Fox.
They went on: “We’re disappointed that instead of putting in the work to solve Americans’ problems, the President instead chose to stay on his luxury golf course to announce unworkable, weak and narrow policy announcements to slash the unemployment benefits that millions desperately need and endanger seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.”
Pelosi also called the orders “unconstitutional slop” in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, according to Business Insider.
The irony of Dems’ opposition
That Democrats have to now criticize Trump for helping Americans when they refused to work out a deal to do so is one of the best things about Trump’s executive actions.
Trump did far more than they did, but they can’t let him look like he did what they refused to do, so they have to criticize orders that put cash in people’s pockets, keep them in housing, help them out with student loans, and give them more unemployment benefits than they would otherwise get.
It’s still up to Congress to fund these actions, so we will see what happens going forward. With any luck, Pelosi and company will put their egos aside for the good of the American people.
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