Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thriptic | Hacker News Reader

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It is somewhat amazing to me that politicians don't seem to understand this. The solution is so simple: give people money directly, give money directly to businesses with the promise that they will not fire anyone, and do it yesterday.

Perhaps I'm simply misreading the situation and am in a bad mood, but it seems that whenever we see a government program rolled out, politicians seem more interested in preventing fraud, misuse, and politically sensitive spending than they are in seeing the program actually succeed / solve it's stated problem. This results in layers of complexity, regulations, and bullshit that impede the program from functioning efficiently. I would rather a cash transfer program have a 25% fraudulent claim rate and a 90% legitimate claim success rate than a 2% fraudulent claim rate and a 50% legitimate claim success rate. Politicians seem to want the latter. Further, there were arguments during the negotiations about the 2 trillion dollar bail out about abortions and oil subsidies ffs. These guys need to get their heads out of their asses and join us in the real world.

They actually are doing both of those points. Everyone's heard of the $1200 checks to individuals, but they also created the Paycheck Protection Program[1] which advertises itself as a small business loan program but "will forgive loans if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities." In other words, if you run a small business, Uncle Sam will cover your payroll for 2 months if you don't fire anyone.

It's the "do it yesterday" part that they're having trouble with. Major banks are saying that the government isn't forthcoming with the details they need to actually implement the lending program, so they've had to delay its launch.

[1] https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relie...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianthompson1/2020/04/03/no-sm...

There has never been a single program administered by the SBA that was not comically broken.

There are two possibilities:

1. This program is going to continue the great tradition of government epic failures of providing help to small businesses

2. This time around it works and small businesses get an immediate ( in a commercial sense of the word ) help in record time.

One won't need to be a genius to figure out the implication of 2. Personally, I think it would be 1.

> The solution is so simple: give people money directly, give money directly to businesses with the promise that they will not fire anyone, and do it yesterday.

The CARES act did do this, and it did it yesterday.

Passed != Implemented

> It is somewhat amazing to me that politicians don't seem to understand this.

Since we are now awaiting implementation, politicians are no longer in the picture. They understood what needed to be done, and did their jobs. It is now up to the bureaucrats.

This isn't an accurate picture of the US Federal government.

Now that congress has passed the law, it's up to the EXECUTIVE BRANCH of the government to make it happen. There's a politician at the head of that - POTUS.

People wanted an outsider in the White House, someone who would "shake things up", and this is the consequence. This is what it means.

The POTUS can and should be making this implement faster.

> Now that congress has passed the law, it's up to the EXECUTIVE BRANCH of the government to make it happen. There's a politician at the head of that - POTUS.

This is implemented through the agencies of the Executive branch, the operations for which are almost entirely run by bureaucrats. When Trump entered office, he didn't just fire all of the bureaucrats at the Department of Labor, he just replaced its head.

The folks that work on the day-to-day operations of processing unemployment insurance claims, or maintaining/improving the systems remain largely unchanged. Their employment is a function of the budget and funding, which is determined by Congress, and then assented by the POTUS.

In the case of CARES, the Senate unanimously passed it, and POTUS quickly signed it into law. He is not going to micro-manage its implementation. It's now up to the bureaucrats.

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