Trump ponders UBI as COVID-19 relief
Coronavirus pandemic aligns president with unlikely allies Mitt Romney, Andrew Yang, Rep. Omar
President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin take part in Tuesday’s White House briefing on the coronavirus. (ABC News)
By Ted Cox
The need for unity across the political spectrum in the face of the coronavirus pandemic was on abundant display Tuesday as President Trump admitted he’s considering a cash infusion to American workers along the lines of Universal Basic Income.
At the daily White House briefing on the COVID-19 outbreak, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who’s recently served as the Trump administration’s point man in negotiations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said they’re “looking at sending checks to Americans immediately.” He added, “Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now. And I mean now, in the next two weeks.”
Mnuchin didn’t give an estimate for how much those checks might be, but Trump said, “We’re going big.” Mnuchin said the goal was to get the checks out swiftly to boost the economy as it faces a nationwide shutdown as people isolate to prevent spread of the disease. The proposal to send people money figures to be included in one of the aid packages working their way through Congress, and it has surprising bipartisan support for a concept that was considered far-left socialism only weeks ago.
Already this week, U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the former GOP presidential candidate and the lone Republican to vote for Trump’s impeachment in the Senate, proposed a $1,000 payment to every U.S. adult “to help ensure families and workers can meet their short-term obligations and increase spending in the economy.”
At the opposite end of the political spectrum, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota announced on Tuesday that she’d be proposing giving $1,000 to every U.S. adult and $500 to each child — “no exceptions.” She added, “We need to support the American people NOW — and this is just a start.”
Only last year, Trump tried to demonize Omar and her freshmen congressional colleagues Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley — a quartet fondly known as the Squad — as “a very racist group of troublemakers.”
Again, just this week, former Chicago Alderman and One Illinois co-founder Ameya Pawar ran an op-ed column in the Chicago Tribune with Illinois Cash Coalition colleague Ebony Scott calling for immediate cash transfers to U.S. citizens in a bid to provide relief to idled workers and keep the economy going.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who ran on a platform advocating Universal Basic Income and giving Americans $1,000 a month, tweeted on Tuesday: “My phone is blowing up.”
Yang dropped out of the 2020 presidential campaign as the Democratic race narrowed to former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, with critics saying his proposal was a pipe dream. But on Tuesday he welcomed the sudden acceptance of the concept, telling Time magazine, “I’m incredibly excited by the fact that our government seems like they’re on the cusp of doing the common-sense thing to help people get through this coronavirus crisis by putting cash straight into a family’s hands.”