/White House considers measures to boost economy without Congress

White House considers measures to boost economy without Congress

WASHINGTON — The White House is considering another delay in the deadline for filing federal taxes along with additional measures aimed at providing economic relief for Americans that can be adopted without legislation from Congress, two people familiar with the discussions said.

Tax Day has already been pushed to July 15 but could be extended further to Sept. 15, or as late as Dec. 15, these people said, though administration officials stressed that no decision has been made.

Another proposal under consideration is a moratorium on new federal regulations, and White House officials are looking into whether the president can take executive action to protect businesses from lawsuits if employees become infected with coronavirus while on the job. Lawmakers have discussed some liability protection but administration officials see the issue as urgent.

The potential for new measures comes as the White House braces for a jobs report on Friday that is expected to be the worst in history, with one of the president’s advisers predicting close to a 20 percent unemployment rate. That’s nearly six times the unemployment rate prior to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday the Labor Department announced that another 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits, for a total of more than 34 million in just seven weeks.

Many of the economic proposals the White House is considering depend on Americans reopening businesses and returning to work, with one administration official saying the timing of any announcements could hinge on how that unfolds. “As states begin to reopen we need to wait and see where and what the need is,” the official said.

The goal is for the measures to work in concert with the president’s push to reopen the country, which officials said was hastened in recent weeks by a series of economic briefings that included dire projections through the summer and fall if businesses continue to be shuttered and Americans remain out of work.

Some of the projections showed the unemployment rate skyrocketing above 30 percent and the widespread collapse of small businesses, according to multiple people familiar with the briefings. One person briefed on the numbers said at least one of the projections warned of the potential collapse of as much as 50 percent of the country’s small businesses. Other officials said that number was higher than the projections they’d seen.

The projections have infuriated Trump, who just two months ago told Americans in his State of the Union address that “our economy is the best it has ever been,” two of the people familiar with the briefings said.

“He lost it,” one of them said.

The result was a president who started emphasizing the need for the country to reopen sooner than some of his advisers expected, officials said.

Trump reviewed some of the options for boosting the economy during a “working weekend” at Camp David, where he hosted a group of economic and outside counselors for meetings on “the reopening and economic rejuvenation” broadly.

Among the ideas his team has considered is a tax break for real estate and stock sales by indexing capital gains to inflation and temporarily suspending rules to fast-track possible drug treatments, officials said. Though one official said indexing capital gains for inflation is not currently under consideration.

In terms of legislation, officials said the president continues to back a payroll tax cut, despite opposition from even members of his own party, and infrastructure spending, though some of the economic advice he’s received argues against additional spending.

Friday’s jobs report will be the first since the coronavirus pandemic that reflects a full month of a mothballed U.S. economy. And White House officials said they plan to own the numbers.

“We’re not going to shy away from them,” one official said.

Instead, officials said, the president and his advisers plan to make the argument that while the economic pain is deep, it can be temporary if the country opens as quickly as possible. At the same time they want to soon outline a series of steps the president is taking to give Americans a roadmap of sorts for how the country will recover economically.

The challenge for the president, however, is for his prescriptions to quickly yield signs of economic improvement as he campaigns for re-election, some of his allies said.

“Trump is going to need an improving economy in November or else he’s going to lose,” said Stephen Moore, who has advised the president from outside the White House on economic issues.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said Trump’s trade and energy policies, tax cuts and reduction of federal regulations prior to the current economic downturn will help the economy thrive again.

“As President Trump has said, we are going to ensure that we take care of all Americans so that we emerge from this challenge stronger and with a growing economy, which is why the White House is focused on pro-growth, middle class tax and regulatory relief,” Deere said in a statement.

Part of Trump’s message is to cast the second quarter GDP, which is expected to show negative growth, as an outlier and to project optimism for the third and fourth quarters of the fiscal year.

Before the pandemic, the Trump campaign planned to showcase strong financial gains as the centerpiece of the president’s 2020 pitch. Without that, his political aides have had to shift the narrative to an American comeback story, as opposed to a consistently booming message of prosperity.

The president has dangled tax cuts before, without ever enacting them. He floated a “major” promise for the middle class back in the 2018 midterms that never materialized. And long before the pandemic, starting last September, Trump hinted at “tax cuts 2.0,” which also haven’t become reality in the nine months since.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said earlier this week that potential tax policies and economic proposals could be released this month. While there is a “pause” on relief packages until the next phase of congressional negotiations, aides acknowledge the short-term pain for millions of Americans will be brutal.

“It’s going to be very difficult in the months ahead, no question,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said on CNN Sunday, before projecting optimism for the third and fourth quarters of the year while acknowledging speedy growth may not been seen until 2021.

As part of the White House’s effort to try to show its focus on economic momentum, on Friday Vice President Mike Pence plans to meet with meat suppliers and grocery chains in Iowa. An administration official said played down possible meat shortages, saying there may be some “inconveniences” but “nothing more dramatic than that.”

Last month, when the White House first attempted to pivot from the public health aspect of the crisis to the economic one, the president teased a new task force that would operate in conjunction with the main coronavirus group that has been responding to the pandemic.

The announcement turned out, however, to be a lengthy list of industry heads who had been tasked with revitalizing the economy, though many of them were caught off-guard when their names were included in a Rose Garden rollout.

Apart from a series of phone calls that took place in the following days, the CEOs and business leaders have not been re-convened, in any formal capacity, by the White House since.

Separately, the White House is expected to add as many as ten new members to its coronavirus task force amid discussions about what the next phase of the panel will look like after Trump signaled it would wind down then reversed course to say it would continue.

Original Source