President Donald Trump signed a bill containing $900 billion in pandemic relief, the White House said, triggering the flow of aid to individuals and businesses and averting the risk of a partial government shutdown on Tuesday.
In addition to aid to stem the economic effects of the pandemic, the legislation Congress passed Monday also includes $1.4 trillion in government spending to fund federal agencies through the end of the fiscal year in September. The government had been operating on temporary spending authority that expires after the end of the day Monday.
Participation in the Main Street Lending Program for midsize companies is partly about public service, but the core business rationale is building "a banking relationship that continues on for some time," the Boston Fed chief says.
Dr. Bart Hildreth is professor and former dean at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Previously, Bart spent 30 years as a business school professor at Wichita State University (including interim business dean), LSU, and Kent State. His expertise is state and local finance, with a specific focus on municipal securities and tax policy.He is a public member of the Board of Directors of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (2012-2015). He has served on the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting and the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council, received two gubernatorial appointments to serve on the board of the Kansas Development Finance Authority, chaired a state-wide tax review committee, served on several GFOA national committees (including the disclosure task forces), and held the position of Director of Finance for the City of Akron, Ohio where he had financial responsibility for the successful workout of a technical default on a waste-to-energy facility.Since 1989, he has served as the editor-in-chief of the only refereed journal devoted to municipal securities, the Municipal Finance Journal. In addition to numerous journal articles and books, his publications include State and Local Government Debt Issuance and Management, the Handbook on Taxation, and Budgeting: Politics and Power (Oxford University Press, 2010).A Fulbright Scholar (at McGill University, Montreal), he also received the 2008 national award for lifetime scholarly achievement in the field of public budgeting and financial management. Bart�s degrees are from the University of Alabama (B.A.), Auburn University at Montgomery (M.P.A) and the University of Georgia (Ph.D.).
The pandemic is introducing changes — potentially significant ones — to the SOX compliance process.
The combined $2.3 trillion package was the product of intense negotiations, from which Trump was largely absent until he surprised lawmakers of both parties by demanding bigger stimulus payments for individuals after the bill was already passed.
Trump said in the statement announcing the signing that the GOP Senate had agreed to vote on increasing the $600 individual payments and two other, unrelated matters dealing with social media and his unfounded allegations of voter fraud.
His delay in signing it means those aid payments will likely be later than Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had promised and may cut a week from the supplemental unemployment benefits that were part of the package and scheduled to end in March.
The virus relief package will likely be the last major legislation signed by Trump, whose re-election hopes were dashed in large part due to his handling of the pandemic.
President-elect Joe Biden has said he will push for even more stimulus after taking office early next year, but it remains unclear whether Republicans in Congress would go along. Control of the Senate will be determined by the outcome of two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan 5.
Lawmakers approved the government funding and additional relief at the last possible moment before they were set to leave Washington for a year-end break. Business leaders have called on Congress to pass more stimulus for months, saying that restaurants, theaters, mom-and-pop stores and airlines were being decimated by closures and restrictions as Covid-19 cases spiked in the U.S.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a relief deal on Sunday after more than a week of frantic talks sparked by a bipartisan group of senators who drafted their own compromise proposal and urged their leaders to act. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, representing the administration, also was involved in the talks.
Trump surprised even his fellow Republicans on Tuesday by tweeting a video saying that he wanted Congress to increase the size of stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, from the $600 in the bill Congress passed. He also complained about federal spending on foreign aid and international programs, even though those funds were allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process for funding the government.