>> Donald Trump is asking Congress for a whopping $850 billion stimulus package, the majority
of which would go toward businesses as opposed to straight in the hands of the American people
who clearly are frustrated by what the coronavirus and this worldwide pandemic is doing to their
personal finances.
So let me give you some of the details, and then we'll hear from our Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and what their priorities are.
So according to the Washington Post, White House officials are leaning hard into the
idea of tax cuts and industry assistance, while Democrats have said their proposals
are focused more on helping workers, health care providers, schools, and new senior citizens.
Now I do wanna add a caveat to this though, the legislation coming out of the house as
we spoke about yesterday, was water down by the time republicans got their hands on it.
And so really the stimulus and the paid time off that Democrats were hoping to give to
most workers was dwindled down to a small portion of US workers.
And there was a loophole for companies that have 500 employees or more, meaning these
massive corporations, the companies that can afford to give their employees paid sick leave
are exempt from that legislation.
Now Steve Mnuchin met with Senate Republicans today to discuss the stimulus package just
to give you an idea where we're at today versus where we were back in 2008.
In 2008, Congress passed $700 billion in a stimulus package and it was called the Troubled
Asset Relief Program to try to rescue the financial system.
Now keep in mind, there were no tax cuts that went along with it, what the Trump administration
has been eyeing is tax cuts.
But before I give you more details on what they're trying to do, let's go to a quick
clip of Steven Mnuchin talking about really what his top priorities seems to be in this
whole situation.
>> This is worse than 911.
For the airline industry, they're almost ground to a halt.
The President wants to make sure that although we don't want people to travel unless it's
critical, we wanna maintain for critical travel the right to have domestic travel.
>> The billion dollars is that- >> I'm not gonna comment on the specifics.
I will tell you, we're very focused.
There's a lot of workers, this is strategically important to us and we'll be working with
Congress on >> The airline industry will be in good shape.
>> So they're concerned about the airline industry because clearly, a bunch of flights
have been halted, people haven't been travelling for good reason.
And so they're worried about these poor airlines that have been price gouging us for years
now.
They received giant tax cuts under the Trump tax cut plan.
And what did they do?
Did they reinvest that money into their companies?
Did they maybe pass off some of those profits to their workers?
Did they prepare for a rainy day or what we're experiencing right now?
No, they did the exact opposite.
As the BBC reports, data revealed by Bloomberg shows major airlines including United and
American Airlines used an average 96% of their spare cash buying back their own shares.
American Airlines led the pack buying back more than $12.5 billion of its own shares
from 2010 to 2019.
United Airlines used 80% of its spare cash buying back its shares.
I only bring that up because we shouldn't even be having a discussion about bailing
out airline companies, period, right?
Like, they have been incredibly profitable.
They've had spare cash and they have only used to further enrich themselves.
Every American gets told by right-wingers in this country, right-wing politicians.
Well, you should have three to six months of money stored away somewhere for a situation
like this.
And if you don't, that's on you, you should have been saving.
But most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now, so why don't we use that
same logic for profitable companies like these airline companies?
>> Especially when you look at who is supposed to be buying tickets on airplanes, like people
are supposed to be buying tickets on airplane.
So if we can't afford to make a rent, chances are we're not gonna afford a vacation anytime
soon.
I mean I don't know how many people can even afford vacation as is.
But I think that's the whole fallacy of our economy and what's interesting about what's
going on right now is that it's exposing every little crack in the bizarre economic logic
that we have in this country, right?
Which is that everything trickles down that if you help the people at the top, somehow
it'll all reach the people at the bottom and yet we are simultaneously based on consumerism,
we're just gonna buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, until it's like, well, yeah, then make things
a little bit less stressful on consumers.
I mean we can't even get toilet paper right now, like we can't even get a hand sanitizer.
The frustrating thing is that it does seem like the airline industry, specifically, is
one of those industries that is too big to fail in the sense that you need like a country
needs to have the ability to travel, you need airplanes to go back and forth for an economy
to work when we get out of this.
So you do need some form of an airline industry.
So it's like they can hold a gun to the government's head and be like, give us the money or we'll
go under and you're just not gonna have an airplane is gonna go, coming out of LAX to
JFK and all that stuff.
So you do need an airline industry but there is no serious discussion over what a real
proposal would be.
Which I think, frankly, it needs to be considered, which is to nationalize the airline industry,
or at least have a public airline like a lot of other countries have.
>> Right, that's true.
>> Most other countries have a public airline, which is owned by the government, which is
it works in the interest of its citizens, right?
It creates routes that maybe aren't as profitable as other routes but are needed in order to
have the flow of commerce, instead of these stock buybacks, which, frankly, are just used
to enrich shareholders and executives who are paid often by stock options.
If their stock price goes up, then they get paid more.
So they're incentivized to juice the stock price by doing the stock prices instead of
investing in better airplanes, better service, higher wages better.
All those good things.
>> Yeah, no interest.
And by the way, I mean you mentioned how other countries do things with their airline companies.
There are also specific like regulations and protections for consumers.
So for instance, I remember when one of my flights was delayed when I had to travel,
actually, last year, when I traveled to Munich for the security conference.
Just because I was delayed a few hours, I was given like money to eat something when
I was at the airport.
>> Yeah, nice.
>> And then they're like, okay, fill out these forms, and you'll be compensated for the delay,
and I was like- >> Did you have to buy like airport clothing,
as well?
Which is like a big T-shirt that was like, Munich!
>> No.
>> Cuz that'd be cute.
>> No, but the fact that they have protections- >> What a meeting.
>> For people so if you're stuck in an airport, you get a meal and you also get some type
of reimbursement if you've been delayed.
But you're right, in the United States, there are none of those protections.
In fact, they oversell each flight and people get kicked off if everybody shows up for that
flight.
But let me give you more details on what's going on currently with Congress and what
the government is trying to do allegedly to help average Americans.
So Democrats are coming at this from a little bit of a different approach.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of some of these corporate Democrats, but it appears that rather than
giving massive tax cuts to companies, they're focusing more on average Americans, average
workers who are also really suffering from what's happening.
So Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to outline his $750 proposal and
contrast it with the White House's approach.
Schumer's offering would expand unemployment insurance, provide money for schools, public
transportation, expand Medicaid funding, expand more investments in healthcare, provide loan
assistance, and halt evictions and foreclosures, which by the way, some states have taken matters
into their own hands.
And they've decided that they will not collect any debts, just in order to keep people feeling
a little less stressed out in this situation.
But I like that Schumer wants to come at it from this approach.
But it's one thing to say you wanna do these things, it's another thing to actually fight
for them.
And when you read what happened in the House with Nancy Pelosi's legislation-
>> Yeah.
>> I mean you have a doofus like Louie Gohmert holding her back from accomplishing something
that would be incredibly popular with the American public, so fight for it.
>> Yeah, well, the real frustrating thing is that Nancy Pelosi has majority in the House,
so she could, in theory, write whatever bill she wants and pass it.
Like if she controls her caucus, right?
And it seems very obvious that the play should be if they were a real opposition party to
just pass the best possible bill, like regardless of the political ramifications with the Republicans,
and then dare the Republicans to pass it because they're desperate in an election year to not
thank the economy.
So they need the stimulus package more than anyone else like if they're running for reelection
right now.
The President's running for reelection and if the economy collapses from now until then,
he will lose.
Like he will lose against any corpse they put up there.
So it's all in our hands to just pass the best possible version.
Don't worry about like, if we do this, they might no, because the thing the Democrats
always do, it's crazy, like in Denmark, they passed a stimulus package where the state
pays 75% of workers’ wages while employers paid 25%.
Workers give up five days of paid off holiday in exchange for no layoffs during the lockdown.
>> Yeah.
>> Zero layoffs.
>> Wow.
>> That is the kinda stimulus that would be needed, like the house could pass something
like that, no problem, they have the majority.
And then you could just hand it over to the Republicans be like, pass this or nothing,
or you take the economy and you lose everything cuz that's what will happen.
>> I think strategically you're absolutely right.
There's no reason not to do that.
You're right that it is, once again, whenever democrats sorta seemingly have the upper hand
because reality ends up giving it to them, they usually squander it.
But what you just mentioned with Denmark, saying no layoffs, I mean that's the rub for
me with how we approach things like economic bailouts in this country is that we never
actually talk about industry.
We're never actually putting pressure on companies like Amazon or on the restaurant industry
to have stronger worker protections or not have a moratorium on layoffs, or a moratorium
on debt collection or whatever it is and that's sorta why I'm frustrated with, ultimately,
a lot of these stimulus packages.
That's still taxpayer dollars.
>> Yes.
>> That's still coming out of our money, right?
>> Exactly.
>> Whereas, if you say a moratorium on layoffs, that's on industry, or if you say right now,
McDonald's workers, Chipotle workers, same thing, I know, AppleBee's, maybe it's the
same thing, it's all really the same mush.
>> Probably.
>> But like, I didn't know they didn't have paid sick leave.
Like it's taken a pandemic for us to realize that like maybe that's why Chipotle makes
us go to the bathroom as frequently as we have to, but there's no way that the US Congress
is like, we'll do anything that compromises or minimally regulates the private sector.
>> Right, you're you're exactly right.
And every time our lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, fear monger about socialism,
just keep in mind that what is being proposed right now by the Trump administration is socialism
for corporations that are struggling.
So we have the same thing here that they have in Denmark, it's just flipped.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
We don't care about protecting the workers, it's all about taking taxpayer money to help
bail out companies that have done very little in investing in US workers.
That's what those tax cuts were supposed to be.
You're supposed to increase the wages of your employees.
According to Trump, you're supposed to reinvest in your company.
All they did was buy shares of their own stock.
>> I mean, yeah, there could be a guarantee that the airlines would make sure that none
their employees would face a layoff, or that if they did have to bench them that they would
get paid.
That'd be fine.
Like we never have any follow through as a citizens, I mean, where's our follow through?
I think some of them economic stimulus money in 2008 was good went to good stuff.
And a lot of it didn't.
I mean this is something that we don't check up on.
>> I just I think, yeah, I mean I could talk about that 2008 crisis all day, we are currently
experiencing a housing crisis because the banks, which got bailed out, now own all of
those properties, right?
And they are renting them.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
That's what they did.
And there's a shortage of housing, partly because of that, and it's like they not only
got bailed out, but they continue to screw us by manipulating the housing market the
way that they have.