What about all the people not "in the system" already

[Sunriser13]

The US is full of folks who have been scraping by for many years without applying for any assistance and have not filed tax returns because 'why bother' - we didn't make enough to owe anything, and we knew damn well nobody was going to give us anything.

I'm talking about the homeless guy doing odd jobs to survive, the 'self-employed' person who didn't pay SS or self-employment taxes because if they had they couldn't have paid rent, etc. Many are too proud or (were) too self-sufficient to feel they should apply for help, for various reasons, or knew there was nothing available for them anyway. Some simply believed there were others worse off than they were and refused to be part of the dwindling assistance pool, believing others needed it more.

Just like the ACA, cruel policies restricted Medicaid expansion in many states, which left those who couldn't claim making $12,000/yr. or more not even qualifying for insurance subsidies, BUT those same people don't qualify for policy-limited Medicaid benefits, either.

I don't know - it's late, I'm rambling, and might not even be making much sense. But a lot of folks are going to fall through the cracks - again - some of us right here at DU.

[stopbush]

1. The problem so far is that it seems like Congress is trying to construct a package

that is as narrow in its scope as possible, rather than being as expansive as possible.

Any package will need R votes to pass, and that means getting over the RW ideological hurdle that people who aren’t millionaires are “lazy freeloaders who need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” and that giving them anything for “free” only encourages their “laziness.”

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. Was just thinking about this.

[handmade34]

3. this will be a problem