In other news, the Biden campaign has reserved $280 million in digital and television ads through the fall election which is the largest reservation ever and twice as much as Trump.
Meanwhile, former Kansas Secretary of State, gubernatorial candidate, and architect of "papers please" anti-immigration law, Kris Kobach, was utterly embarrassed last night, getting just 26 percent of the vote in the state's primary.
Finally, the Wall Street Journal reports that economists at JP Morgan estimate that if the pandemic unemployment program lapses for the entire month, it could result in a drop in consumer spending as large as we saw over the entire Great Recession. But even cutting the program will cause significant losses.
Nearly 1 million jobs could be lost through the end of the year, and unemployment could be 0.6 percentage points higher if lawmakers reduce the benefit to $200 a week, according to a recent estimate from Moody's Analytics.
Slicing the federal supplement to $300 would lead to a 1% contraction in the economy by the end of 2020 and cost 800,000 jobs, said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist at Evercore ISI. [...]
Total spending among unemployed households increased 10% during the initial months of the pandemic, instead of falling about 7% as it typically does, according to a recent JPMorgan Chase Institute analysis. This is likely because of the $600 boost.
By contrast, spending among those who kept their jobs dropped by 10%.
"It's been a life preserver. Not only is it keeping afloat households, but it's also keeping afloat lots of businesses," said Peter Ganong, an assistant public policy professor at the University of Chicago who co-authored the JPMorgan report. "If people are spending more, then it's creating jobs."
Also, other parts of the economy have not collapsed during the pandemic-fueled downturn, Ganong said. For instance, there hasn't been a wave of foreclosures.
Cutting benefits to $200, or eliminating the program entirely, is still the GOP's position.