As Deadline Looms, Madison Mayor & Community Leaders Call for Urgent Renewal & Expansion of COVID Relief
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Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Leaders of Citizen Action of Wisconsin and Kids Forward Will Speak
Madison: Congress and the President must take urgent action in the next ten days to maintain existing pandemic relief efforts and expand them with new investments to address the full depth of the employment crisis in Wisconsin.
What: News Event on need for urgent federal action on COVID relief
When: Wednesday, July 15th, 11 AM
Where: Madison Municipal Building, 215 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Madison, WI 53703,
Room 215
Speakers:.
--Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, City of Madison
--Dr Robert Kraig, Executive Director, Citizen Action of Wisconsin
--A Speaker from Kids Forward
--Additional speakers may be added
When Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in March, it was impossible to know that the pandemic would continue to spin out of control after the four month sunset of many of its provisions. It is now essential for Congress to pass a new round of relief, extending current benefits and dramatically expanding them to the scale of the crisis.
At a news conference hosted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway Wednesday, speakers will discuss the massive economic devastation of the pandemic. If Congress does not act in July, Wisconsin will face an unprecedented wave of new unemployment, foreclosures, evictions, and many other impacts.
Major topics
- The $600/week stimulus benefit for the unemployed and workers who have lost hours is keeping millions of families afloat expires on July 25.
- Local governments are facing serious budget shortfalls and need a massive infusion of federal money to cope with the public health and economic fallout of the pandemic. $11 billion in aid to Wisconsin state and local government is included in the House relief package, but has been held up for months in the U.S Senate.
- The Depression-like impact of the pandemic calls for critical new investments, such as Senator Tammy Baldwin’s proposal to create a large publicly-subsidized jobs program to put people to work.
- During the New Deal of the 1930, jobs programs built a new economy which laid the groundwork for the war effort and decades of postwar prosperity.
- A federal job program is a huge opportunity in 2020 to begin the transition needed to prevent a climate catastrophe.
- A federal jobs program is the best way to dramatically reduce the racial inequality which plagues every American community. This would begin to address the racial equity crisis that has sparked the historic protest movement in Madison and across the country.
Departments:
