Look in any economic downturn.
The Central Valley is always the 1st place
to suffer the last place to recover.
We've definitely seen
that over the last year.
I mean, the country sneezes.
We catch a cold.
We've had a lot of folks going.
Unemployment.
A lot of folks that really need help in
order to buy groceries and then pay rent.
And this bill is really
going to do two things.
First, it's going to help us get
this pandemic under control by
accelerating our distribution efforts,
making sure that everybody who needs.
He shot in their arm to keep them safe,
gets one and then second it's going to
provide much needed economic relief to
help folks rebuild after this pandemic.
It's going to do that by creating
these one time stimulus checks,
folks, giving $1400 immediately,
and then it's going to make sure
that we go even further by creating
things like unemployment assistance.
And in this child allowance.
If we talked a lot about that,
the Child tax credit, the expansion of it.
Yeah, I know there's kind of a
lot of confusion with people about
checks that are going to be coming as
part of it and then rest the taxes.
We can just walk
us through what people should expect.
Yeah look, the way to think about this
is an average family of five across
the Central Valley is going to be
getting $17,000 over the next year.
That's going to be life changing
to a lot of folks and.
A lot of that is going to come
even in the next couple of days.
Every person making less as a couple
of less than $150,000 a year is going
to be getting a $1400 check for them.
Their spouse or partner, and every
dependent that lives in their household.
And so if you have a family of five,
you really getting, you know $10,000,
right right there and then. Second,
there's going to be a child allowance,
so just for every kid in your household,
younger. In 17,
that's going to start coming online in July,
and it's going to be coming
every single month.
I hope it's going to be coming
every single month permanently,
but for now we have it until
the rest of the year,
and so if you have three kids,
you're going to be getting 3000
at least $3000 per kid from
now until the end of the year,
so maybe you'll be making if you have
two or three kids 750 bucks a month,
and then the remainder will be coming
when you file your 2021 taxes.
Is that example which I explain it?
It's kind of
complicated. It's going to come
get so with with the payments
that are the monthly payments.
How can people expect to receive those?
Is the same way as stimulus payments. So the
child allowance is going to Cam come
the same way the stimulus checks come.
So if you have your direct
deposit on file with the IRS,
you're going to be getting that
direct deposit coming into your
bank account as early as July.
As soon as the IRS has their system set up.
If the IRS doesn't have.
Direct deposit information
and then you can set it up.
Even now you can set up that direct
deposit with the IRS or you're going
to be receiving a check or debit
card in the Mail every single month
for the duration of the program. M11
area of concern that we've
been reporting a little bit is.
Either really low income or even
some homeless families who may not.
File taxes may not have ever even claimed
the first or second stimulus payment.
Do you know about the process for
them? Yeah, so if the IRS
doesn't have information on file.
If they don't know where to contact you,
or if you moved or changed your
filing since the last tax deadline,
then you have to update your information
and you can go to irs.gov/coronavirus
and you could work with them.
You can also call my office
call me anytime 209-579-5458 and
we can also try to help you.
With the process,
if you haven't filed taxes or if
that information isn't up to date.
You mentioned earlier that you
would like to see this permanent.
Do you think there's momentum for that?
I hope so. Look today.
One in five kids in the Central
Valley grows up in poverty.
That shouldn't be the Case No matter who
your parents are or where you're born,
you should have a chance at the American
dream and this child allowance is going
to cut that child poverty in half.
That's going to be a big deal.
I mean, if you have two kids,
you're going to be getting 500
bucks a month from this program
from now until the end of the year.
And then you'll be getting
the remainder another $3000.
When you file your taxes next year,
and so that's going to be a good
deal and I really hope we were able
to make sure that this is not a
program that terminates in December.
And I believe there's some strong
bipartisan support to continue it.
Can you talk about what
you've heard from families?
What this means for them,
and then also for the economy as a
whole in the Central Valley is going
to mean so much. I mean, I talked to
a family in Modesto the other day,
and you know the dad lost his job.
He couldn't pay rent,
so we ended up getting evicted from his home.
Now him, his wife and their kids
are living out of their car.
This is going to allow that man to
make sure that they are finding their
way back into permanent housing.
He could find his way back
into the workforce.
His kids can find their way back
into school and into the classroom.
And there's so many folks that have
been in that situation through no
fault of their own fault of their
own just because of where this
pandemic has left our economy.
And so this is going to allow us not
just to get this vaccine distributed
and to get this pandemic under control,
it's going to allow us to actually
repair so much of the damage that
this epidemic has really brought
across our community.
Yeah,
so let's talk about 2 two
other parts of the of the bill.
First $1400 stimulus checks.
We've heard from some banks that are.
This question will, I guess,
they claim they're not holding the money,
but they're not paying it out right away.
Some people got paid over the weekend.
Some people are being told they
gotta wait till. Till Wednesday.
What do you think of the rollout so
far with with the those checks? Look,
I think those checks should
have gone out yesterday.
I think people need the money so many folks
have been waiting for this for months.
I mean, I would have liked this relief
bill to have happened six months ago
was certainly necessary six months ago
when we knew what needed to happen,
so I hope that we're able to get that
out the door as soon as possible.
I know some banks have different
decisions on that distribution,
and then there's also folks that
don't have direct deposit where
they're going to be waiting for that.
Check the COM from the Treasury
Department and so I think it's
really important that we make sure
that every payment goes out the
door as soon as possible so people
are able to buy those groceries.
People able to pay that rent
as soon as they can.
And if you're having any trouble
with your stimulus payments,
please contact me.
Contact my office harder.house.gov
we're here to help.
And then the unemployment
benefits they got there extended.
There's the $300. Boost,
do you think it's it's enough for
for unemployed people? I hope so.
Look, I mean by far the best
thing that we can do is make sure that
people are getting back to work and
as soon as we get folks vaccinated,
the sooner folks can get off of
unemployment and get back to their jobs.
That's by far the best answer here and
especially true because the California
Unemployment Office IDD has had so
many problems over the last year,
but there is money in this bill
to not only continue.
The bad supplemental unemployment insurance,
but also to make sure that we
can fix California unemployment,
it's going to make sure that we can
hire more callers for their call center
so they can actually pick up the
phone and help people who need help.
It's money to make sure that they can
fix their antiquated computer systems
and processes so they can hopefully make
sure that they can identify fraud and
not confuse it with legitimate claims.
And then third,
there's also supported this bill to
forgive unemployment from taxes,
and that's a big deal 'cause we're
headed towards tax season.
Every unless that you have made
less than $10,000.
If you have benefited from less than
$10,000 of unemployment insurance,
that will all be forgiven.
Under this legislation,
you won't have to pay taxes,
which is just common sense.
I mean,
if your neighbor comes and asks you for help,
you don't give it to him,
and then next day go and ask him
for 10 or 20% of that back.
That doesn't make any sense in this
bill fixes that tax obligation for
so many people that have been on
unemployment for the past year.
When I ask you. The.
Coronavirus kind of brought
about the PUA program,
which brought some unemployment
relief to people who before
didn't receive any help.
Do you think there's have been
any talk moving forward about
creating some sort of a program
to help self-employed and contract
workers during difficult times?
I think we need to do a top to bottom
reform of the way that we do unemployment
across California and across this country
'cause it's clear that it has not worked.
I have heard from so many people about all of
the failures of our own unemployment office,
both in terms of who's eligible as well
as just in terms of the people who are
eligible getting the help that they need.
I mean, I talked to one woman who told
me that she calls California unemployment
office up to 100 times a day an in.
Six week span where she was
calling 100 times a day,
not once that she talked
to a single human being.
That's that's the situation that we
have with our unemployment office.
And so it's clear there need to
be pretty systematic changes.
I do think that as part of the changes
to unemployment going forward,
we need to make sure that everyone
who has a job is eligible,
not just folks who work in one
particular company.
If you're self-employed or you're an
independent contractor,
or you have your hours cut from
20 hours to 0.
You should still be eligible for the same
unemployment benefits as anybody else,
and that's one of the fixes that were
going to make the system going forward.
OK, and then just really quick
like touch also on vaccines.
Key tell us about what,
what specifically is in the bill.
What is it going to mean for
getting shots to people? Yeah,
this is going to make sure that
people get vaccines faster.
It's going to do that by two ways.
First is there's more money here
to purchase more vaccines and
improve the amount of supply,
especially the supply coming to the
Central Valley because we haven't
necessarily always gotten our fair share
of vaccines over the past few months.
And then second,
there's a lot of support here.
To hire more workers and health care workers.
And that's really important,
because when we were at zero percent
ICU bed capacity in the Central Valley,
it's not because we didn't have
the physical bedspace 'cause
we didn't have the doctors,
the nurses,
the health care workers to make
sure that folks could need help.
And as we expand distribution efforts,
that's going to be more important.
It's more important to make sure that we
have qualified people to distribute this
vaccine and get shots into arms ASAP.
And this bill provides for 100,000 new
community health workers across the country.
Many of those are going to
be coming to our area,
and that's going to be really
important 'cause it's going to
make sure that we can get this
pandemic under control even faster.
Hi, my last question for you here.
You were you been critical of the vaccine?
I guess the amount of vaccine
available in the Central Valley.
Do you feel like it's improved at
all in the last few weeks since
you first started raising concerns?
It has gotten better, but look this
should be a very simple process.
The vaccines should go to the
areas that need to help the most.
They shouldn't go to the wealthiest
counties that shouldn't go to the counties
that are most politically connected.
They should go to the folks that have been
working frontline jobs for the past year.
That's what's right and so unfortunately,
that's not what happened early on.
Those vaccines were not going.
There were disproportionately
not going to the Central Valley.
I think the governor has made some changes
and that's been frankly long overdue.
But I do think we have seen some real
improvements in vaccines applied.
The Central Valley is now getting more
vaccines and that problem is is getting
slowly but surely a little bit better.
And then also we worked hand in hand
with the federal government to bypass
the state and get vaccines directly into
Community health centers across the Valley.
So we've been Golden Valley Health
Centers just announced last week.
We're working with partnership with them
to get vaccines directly from the person
at the Health Resources Office nationally,
which is going to make sure that those
vaccines go directly to the Central Valley.