As Washington scrambles for more bailout money, the Fed sits on mountain of untapped funds Hundreds of billions of dollars from the Cares Act remains uncommitted and may go unspent despite scramble by White House to produce more aid ............... Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials say there are ways the money could be repurposed to more directly reach businesses and workers but say they cannot do so without congressional approval. ........... Republican lawmakers have expressed openness to pass legislation to immediately repurpose these funds, but Pelosi has rejected that approach in favor of a more comprehensive bill. .......... As financial relief remains idle, cities and states have begun exploring budget cuts to make up for revenue shortfalls, with Chicago and New York City contemplating dramatic cuts to their workforces. ......... One bank told Roth to take out a loan against her house — and then offered to pray for her. ........ Congress should take the untapped money “put to the Fed for a purpose the Fed could not reasonably achieve” and use it instead to fund another round of stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits and infrastructure needs. .............. These programs are square pegs trying to fit a round hole. The Fed cannot design a program to get money into the classroom to build plexiglass to help kids go back into school.”
Trump’s den of dissent: Inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges As summer faded into autumn and the novel coronavirus continued to ravage the nation unabated, Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist whose commentary on Fox News led President Trump to recruit him to the White House, consolidated his power over the government’s pandemic response. ........... Atlas also cultivated Trump’s affection with his public assertions that the pandemic is nearly over, despite death and infection counts showing otherwise, and his willingness to tell the public that a vaccine could be developed before the Nov. 3 election, despite clear indications of a slower timetable. ....... Atlas, whom colleagues said they regard as ill-informed, manipulative and at times dishonest .......... Birx, whose profile and influence has eroded considerably since Atlas’s arrival, told Pence’s office that she does not trust Atlas .......... a U.S. response increasingly plagued by distrust, infighting and lethargy, just as experts predict coronavirus cases could surge this winter and deaths could reach 400,000 by year’s end. ......... The doctor’s denial conflicts with his previous public and private statements, including his recent endorsement of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which effectively promotes a herd immunity strategy. ........ On Saturday, Atlas wrote on Twitter that masks do not work, prompting the social media site to remove the tweet for violating its safety rules for spreading misinformation. Several medical and public health experts flagged the tweet as dangerous misinformation coming from a primary adviser to the president. ......... Trump and many of his advisers have come to believe that the key to a revived economy and a return to normality is a vaccine. “They’ve given up on everything else” ............ “It seems to me this is policy-based evidence-making rather than evidence-based policymaking” ........... Fauci, Birx, Surgeon General Jerome Adams and other members have confided in others that they are dispirited. ........ Birx and Fauci have advocated dramatically increasing the nation’s testing capacity, especially as experts anticipate a devastating increase in cases this winter. ............. a consensus has formed within the administration that some measures to mitigate the spread of the virus may not be worth the trouble. ............. “This thing can take off. All you need to do is look at what’s happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the last two weeks to see that this thing is way faster than we’re giving it credit for.” .............. In a video taped at the White House on Oct. 5, he vowed, “The vaccines are coming momentarily.” ......... Trump told supporters, “The vaccines are coming soon, the therapeutics and, frankly, the cure. All I know is I took something, whatever the hell it was. I felt good very quickly . . . I felt like Superman.” ........... Pfizer said it will not be able to seek an emergency use authorization from the FDA until the third week of November, at the earliest ............ Trump’s notion of a vaccine as a cure-all for the pandemic is similarly miraculous ......... “There’s no fairy-tale ending to this pandemic. We’re going to be dealing with it at least through 2021, and it’s likely to have implications for how we do everything from work to school, even with vaccines.” .......... “Remember, we have vaccines against the flu, and we still have flu.” ............. Earlier this fall, Trump called Albert Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer, and asked whether a vaccine could be ready for distribution by late October, before the election. ............ Trump’s view of the FDA has darkened considerably in recent weeks. The president now believes — despite the absence of any such evidence — that officials there are working against him to slow-walk vaccine approval as “some sort of ‘deep state’ push to keep him from winning reelection” ................... 50 percent of Americans said they would be willing to take a coronavirus vaccine approved by the FDA “right now at no cost.” That is a sharp decline from 61 percent in August and 66 percent in July. .......... “This administration, like it does with everything, is overselling vaccines. They make it sound like a magic dust they’ll distribute over the country and the disease will go away . . . What could happen is people think, great, I just got my vaccine, I can throw away my mask, I can engage in high-risk activity, and then we’d actually take a step back.” ............... Most controversially, Atlas has pushed a baseless theory inside the task force that the U.S. population is close to herd immunity ... despite a scientific consensus that the United States is nowhere close. ............ about 9 percent of people in the United States had antibodies against the virus. ....... “He’s not an infectious-disease expert,” Guthrie said. “Oh, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Look, he’s an expert. He’s one of the experts of the world.”
