If this was truly a crisis that required immediate action by our government, they failed at every turn. At this point, just send the money back to our grandchildren.

As Congress considered a massive COVID-19 relief package earlier this year, hundreds of mayors from across the U.S. pleaded for “immediate action” on billions of dollars targeted to shore up their finances and revive their communities.

 

Now that they’ve received it, local officials are taking their time before actually spending the windfall.

 

As of this summer, a majority of large cities and states hadn’t spent a penny from the American Rescue Plan championed by Democrats and President Joe Biden, according to an Associated Press review of the first financial reports due under the law. States had spent just 2.5% of their initial allotment while large cities spent 8.5%, according to the AP analysis.

 

Many state and local governments reported they were still working on plans for their share of the $350 billion, which can be spent on a wide array of programs.

 

Though Biden signed the law in March, the Treasury Department didn’t release the money and spending guidelines until May. By then, some state legislatures already had wrapped up their budget work for the next year, leaving governors with no authority to spend the new money. Some states waited several more months to ask the federal government for their share.

Vaccinations help, but this thing is just going to keep burning through areas of the world periodically like the flu and other viruses. It’s time to take reasonable precautions and get on with living.

Despite having the highest vaccination rates in the country, there are constant reminders for most New England states of just how vicious the delta variant of COVID-19 is.

 

Hospitals across the region are seeing full intensive care units and staff shortages are starting to affect care. Public officials are pleading with the unvaccinated to get the shots. Health care workers are coping with pent-up demand for other kinds of care that had been delayed by the pandemic.

You can’t make money and pay your employees if there are no payments to process. Expect chaos if you have student loans.

Major student loan servicer Navient (NAVI) is quitting the federal servicing business, the company announced Tuesday, handing off its 5.5 million borrowers holding about $280 billion in federal student loans to Maximus, another servicer.

 

Advocates and progressive lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) heralded the move, in light of Navient’s troubled relationship with the federal government’s consumer protection bodies.

 

But the departure adds another challenge when the Education Department (ED) looks to end the student loan payment pause in January — especially after four other servicers quit in the past year.

 

[…]

 

With Navient’s announcement, roughly 16.3 million student loan borrowers will be getting a new loan servicer in 2022.

 

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency — which services around 8.5 million student loan borrowers — and Granite State — which services around 1.3 million borrowers — both called it quits in July. Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority, which pulled out in October 2020, serviced around 1 million student loan borrowers.

 

The departures come as the majority of the 43 million student loan borrowers across the U.S must start paying their loans again. The payments have been paused, without interest, since March 13, 2020, with the Biden administration recently extending the pause through January 31, 2022.

Warren cheers:

“Navient has spent decades misleading, cheating, and abusing student borrowers. The Federal student loan program will be far better off without them,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement.

 

“Ultimately, the student loan system is broken,” she continued. “The only way to guarantee that borrowers do not face the same predatory behavior from Navient’s replacement is to cancel student debt, so that no borrower’s future is held hostage by corporations profiting off their financial distress.”

So…. the federal government took over the student loan program, effed it all up, and now the solution is for the taxpayers to just give the money to college kids? Joe Plumber who never went to college has to pay for the lawyer’s student debt because the government is incompetent?

Maybe some politicians who voted to federalize and screw up the student loan system should have to foot the bill.

Excellent. Unfortunately, I expect them to raise the debt ceiling at some point, but at least they won’t do it lightly.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators blocked a bill Monday night to keep the government operating and allow federal borrowing, but Democrats aiming to avert a shutdown pledged to try again — at the same time pressing ahead on President Joe Biden’s big plans to reshape government.

 

The efforts are not necessarily linked, but the fiscal yearend deadline to fund the government past Thursday is bumping up against the Democrats’ desire to make progress on Biden’s expansive $3.5 trillion federal overhaul.

Don’t forget that the problem here is that the politicians in Washington spend too dang much money. If we had a balanced budget, then they wouldn’t need to keep raising the debt ceiling.