BALTIMORE (AP) – It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump signed into law a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package that will distribute money to struggling individuals and businesses. It feels like a lot longer than that to James Stearns of Gulfport, Mississippi.
His job installing vinyl floors was reduced to just one day a week because of the coronavirus outbreak. He’s barely sleeping. The April rent on his trailer is past due. Unless the combined $2,400 that he and his wife are to receive from the rescue package arrives soon, they and their two chihuahuas will be homeless.
“I’m fixing to be evicted – I can’t pay anything,” said Stearns, 52. “I don’t even have power right now. Hot as it is, we’re sitting here sweating to death.”
The administration is in a race against time, trying to provide families and businesses with enough money to survive the devastating economic plunge caused by the pandemic. Neither the White House nor the Treasury Department could say when asked late last week how much of the $2.2 trillion has actually reached needy Americans. Economists have said that the cash infusions will be crucial for sustaining the world’s largest economy.
The task of injecting this much cash into the entire country on a scale never before attempted is monumental. And it’s urgent: One in 10 U.S. workers lost their jobs in the past three weeks. Half of working households say they’ve lost income. The economy is expected to shrink at a shocking 30% annual rate in the April-June quarter.