COVID Payments Helped Millions Escape Poverty Last Year

Due to both direct stimulus payments to Americans and the increase in unemployment benefits, the poverty rate actually FELL during the pandemic last year. This is exactly what these payments were designed to do, and millions of Americans were able to, at least temporarily, get a taste of life outside of poverty. The problem is that these payments have all now ended, but the pandemic apparently has no end in sight - so can Democrats actually do something and get the cash flowing to America's most at-risk families? Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a new report government spending in 2020 to help protect Americans during the pandemic, including both direct stimulus payments and the increase in unemployment benefits, helped lift eight and a half million Americans out of poverty in 2020. In spite of the fact that we were seeing record unemployment, we were in the middle of a recession, we had this pandemic going on. We had lockdowns, we had businesses closing. This money, this direct money coming from the government to the people, made the poverty rate in the country fall during that economic crisis that, by the way, we're still pretty much in right now. I mean, I don't know if you saw the last jobs report from August, but it was not good. It was well below expectations. Things are slowing down again. The only problem is now we don't have that government money.

The extra unemployment benefits are gone. Stimulus payments. Hell, we haven't seen those since February, right? All we have is the expanded child tax credit that we do get every month. So that is helpful. Not as helpful as you know, the direct stimulus payments were and the additional unemployment benefits, but it's something I guess. But it sure as hell isn't enough. These numbers, eight and a half million people last year lifted out of poverty because the government finally decided, all right, you know what, we're going to help you. We're going to help you. And that's something that we typically do not hear the federal government tell us. We get thoughts and prayers. We get platitudes. We get obstruction. We get centrism. We get lectured about the price tags. But during this pandemic, at least a couple of times, they were able to deliver real relief and it had real tangible results.

And again, the problem is all that money's gone now, it's gone. What do we do? Well, we watch as people slip back into poverty is what we do. We watch as Democrats away any hope they have of winning next year's midterms. People are going to suffer. People could potentially die from these decisions. You know, falling back into poverty means you have to make some tough choices. You going to go get that prescription drug or are you going to make dinner for your family? Those are choices that many politicians have not ever had to make in their lives. And those that have had to make them haven't had to make them in so long that they've forgotten what it's like. I've been one of those people. I've been one of those people relatively recently. I know what it's like. And so do millions and millions of Americans out there, millions of Americans who were depending on our government to step up and just do the right thing.

Stop telling us that we can't afford it because we can. Hell, not only do we have a $740 billion military budget, but Republicans just came out and said, you know what, uh, we've got an amendment, go ahead and give them 25 billion more. For no reason, no reason whatsoever. We spent 14 trillion on Afghanistan half of which went to private contractors here in the United States. We have the money. We just don't want to spend it helping people. We've seen from this new report, how helpful that money can be, how many millions of people can have their lives changed for the better because of that money.