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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
By Forum Staff
Progress has been made in negotiations on the next coronavirus relief bill, but significant divisions remain, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
Schumer announced he is telling the Trump administration that robust state and local funding, as well as dollars to help schools open safely is a must for democrats and also the right action for New York and the country.
Schumer also detailed New York data on unemployment, worry of renters, local fiscal needs and other points he’s communicated in his negotiations to ensure federal funding delivers the most help amid the pandemic’s blows. Just some of those blows include that the federal unemployment insurance benefit of $600 is expired, federal eviction protections are gone and local governments from the City of New York to Nassau and Suffolk County governments are looking at a combined tens-of-thousands of local government layoffs.
According to the State Department of Labor, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits, including more than 1.8 million New Yorkers. Schumer also said that approved payments to New York recipients for Unemployment Insurance totaled $32.1 billion from March 1 through July 17. Schumer says these figures prove how critical the issue of unemployment has been for New Yorkers and their families, and how essential the additional $600 was in terms of keeping families above water.
On state and local governments, the pandemic has caused expenses to soar and revenues to plummet. New York City has said more than 20,000 government jobs were at risk and Long Island counties that include Nassau and Suffolk also have serious concerns. Suffolk, alone, has a coronavirus-induced budget hole in the tens-of-millions, according to their County Executive. Schumer also acknowledged, albeit an uphill fight given the opposition of U.S. Senate Leader McConnell, that this next relief bill marks the best chance we have had in a while to fix the unfairness of the SALT cap, restore the full deduction and put an average of about $20,000 across almost 700,000 households back into the Long Island economy. He explained how unfairly ‘capping’ the SALT deduction took direct aim at nearly half of Long Island’s taxpayers who, on average, had claimed $19,886 in full SALT deductions in previous years.
On the issue of schools, Schumer explained that the massive costs of personal protective exquipment, barriers, cleaning supplies, remote internet access, transportation and more for students and teachers are prohibitive to reopening plans. In order to meet this fiscal need, Schumer said the Coronavirus Child Care and Education Relief Act, crafted alongside U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), includes $175 billion in much-needed assistance for K-12 schools and must be part of the “Corona-4” package now being negotiated. Schumer said New York would receive a significant amount of those dollars.
“The bottom-line here is that there is finally real progress, but a ways to go on behalf of New York and the nation if we want to do this right,” Schumer added.
