Instead, Trump calls for Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield to “consider” whether an eviction ban is needed. Trump has said many times in recent days he wants to prevent evictions, but his latest executive order does not ban evictions. Trump’s “memorandum” on this topic doesn’t do what he says it does, as the Washington Post reports: Yet another segment of Trump’s orders leaves a lot of questions unanswered: his alleged effort to extend the CARES Act’s moratorium on evictions in federally assisted rental properties.
That doesn’t just pass the buck, it tries to pass the political cost of the missing benefits onto state leaders. If they don’t, or can’t afford to, then residents of those states will not receive the extra unemployment insurance. Setting up a new program would most likely take months for states to do, and many states already had significant problems figuring out how deliver the CARES Act assistance earlier this year. The memorandum also necessitates setting up a brand-new “lost wages assistance” program to deliver the aid instead of using the traditional unemployment system. It appears the new, degraded supplemental UI benefit may require a new administrative system at the state level, as my colleague Chas Danner noted over the weekend: Similarly, Trump’s convoluted plan for reducing while extending the CARES Act’s supplemental unemployment insurance payments depends on immediate state government compliance, including a state “match” requirement that will astound governors and legislators from both parties who are begging Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars in new assistance to prevent a fast-approaching fiscal catastrophe. “This obviously goes completely against the president’s intention of putting more money in people’s pockets,” but, he adds, “it’s a safer move when the result is unclear.”
His advice? Employers should hang on to the employee portion of payroll taxes that would normally be paid to the government. It will be an empty gesture altogether unless employers agree to bump up payrolls to reflect the deferral, which they very likely won’t do, as Diana Ransom explains at Inc:įor businesses, the prudent thing is to hold tight and not change withholdings for either the payroll tax or income taxes, says Joe Manganelli, founder of the New York City-based strategic advisory and financial management firm Calculate. The prime example is the measure no one really wanted: Trump’s pet idea of cutting payroll taxes - or actually, deferring them in the dubious anticipation that Congress will later cancel the deferred payments. Thanks to well-established emergency powers over federally guaranteed student loans, Trump’s extension of the CARES Act’s suspension of student-loan payments and interest for another three months should have its intended effect for an estimated 35 million borrowers, though the timing could create some administrative problems, and those with privately held student loans won’t benefit.īut as the generally negative reaction shows, the rest of Trump’s orders are producing widespread legal and administrative confusion, in part because so much of his scheme relies on actions by others that may not materialize at all. With one exception, the president’s weekend round of orders aimed at side-stepping congressional gridlock over coronavirus stimulus negotiations did not supply the relief he promised in promulgating them. The term “relief” generally refers to an action that quickly (if not permanently) addresses a critical problem and produces immediately beneficial effects. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images Don’t expect anything big to change after Trump’s poorly crafted orders.
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