When Congress couldn’t agree on a COVID relief package, Trump stepped in and with great fanfare signed four executive actions on Saturday. We break it down.
- One would provide unemployed workers an extra $400 in federal weekly benefits (down from the $600 that expired last month BUT with the States on the hook for $100 of that)
- Another would defer payroll taxes for people who make less than $100,000 a year.
- Yet another would pause student loan payments and interest through December 31.
- And the final order would ‘direct efforts to stop evictions.’
The problem is, the President doesn’t have the power to do this — only Congress. And if you read the executive actions closely, even if they were deemed constitutional, they will not quickly deliver the aid Trump promised.
Even some dyed-in-the-wool Republicans have called this a ‘constitutional overreach.’ Trump slammed Nebraska’s senator Ben Sassen after he called the president’s flurry of executive orders ‘unconstitutional slop.’
Democrats have labeled it a ‘political stunt.’