Due to the covid-19 pandemic, the United States last year lost the most jobs in recent decades. Biden solemnly stated that as soon as he entered the White House, he would promote a new economic stimulus package of trillions of dollars. The president-elect said on the 8th that the latest economic indicators, including a net loss of 140,000 jobs in December 2020, highlighted the urgency of the plan.

According to the British Financial Times, Biden said: ‘It is now necessary to invest. The entire package will cost trillions of dollars. To prevent this year’s economic collapse or serious deterioration, we should invest huge funds now to develop the economy.”

Moody’s Analytics’ estimates of funding showed that Biden’s campaign guidelines called for spending $3.9 trillion in his first term. Considering that the economy has been hit hard by the virus, he was expected to work hard to accomplish most of his goals in the early days of taking office.

Although Congress has just passed a 900 billion US dollar economic rescue bill, its impact was expected to disappear in the spring. Biden said this was just a “down payment” compared to the actions to be taken.

The economic officials of the incoming president said that their top priority was to increase the financial stimulus checks to families, help state and local governments and extend emergency unemployment benefits. In addition, they also emphasized the need to invest in clean energy, infrastructure, education and medical care, one of the sources of whose funding was tax increases on the wealthy and businesses. Biden said he would provide more details on his package plan next week.

But he already faced an obstacle in seeking broad economic stimulus. Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, said he was skeptical about the need to provide new subsidies directly to Americans.

It was noted that the last bailout bill included a check to most people for $600. But Biden, as well as many Democrats and some Republicans, was trying to increase the amount to $2,000.

Manchin said: “I don’t know where the 2,000 dollars came from, and that would cost an additional 400 billion dollars. I don’t remember (Franklin Roosevelt)…giving a penny to someone. Instead, he gave them a job.”

While promoting his economic plan, Biden announced more candidates for the economic team, including Gina Raimundo, Governor of Rhode Island, as Secretary of Commerce and Marty Walsh, Mayor of Boston, as Secretary of Labor.

Georgia’s two run-off elections this week locked the Democratic Party’s control of the Senate and injected new energy into Biden’s economic legislative ambitions. But he may still need to work hard to launch a plan that can both be approved by a severely divided Congress and satisfy the Democratic Left who demands bold action.

According to the German news television channel website on January 8, a report by the US Department of Labor showed that the United States had lost a total of 9.4 million jobs, the largest drop since statistics began in 1939. In 2009, the United States lost 5 million jobs during the economic recession caused by the real estate and financial crisis.The number of unemployed last year, however, exceeded this number.

Due to the cold weather, the increase in the number of people infected with the virus and the new restrictions on companies have impaired the economic recovery, thus causing the  recently sharply slowed employment growth.

The unemployment rate calculated separately in December 2020 is still 6.7%. The labor participation rate, that is, the proportion of employed persons among the population with the ability to work, still remains at 61.5%.

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