Wisconsin kept recovering in July. But don't let the lower unemployment fool you

Much like the rest of the country in July, Wisconsin continued to gain back some of the massive amount of jobs that they lost in March and April.

New WI unemployment data from @WIWorkforce - the state added 25k jobs in July, lowering unemployment rate to 7%.

Still, the state is at -216k jobs for 2020 as a whole, with most of those jobs in the service industry.

— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) August 20, 2020

In fact, it's slightly better than that, as the increase in July was 25,500 private sector jobs, and 30,500 seasonally-adjusted jobs in all.

However, that 30,500 gain is much less than May's gain of 71,400 and June's increase of 101,700. And we still have a lonnng road back until we get to where we were before COVID-19 became a thing, as UW-Madison's Menzie Chinn notes in Econbrowser.

The 7.0% unemployment decline also isn't as great as you may think, because if you look at the report from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, most of the decline is due to Wisconsinites dropping out of the labor force.

Combined with June's decline, more than 80,000 people have left Wisconsin's work force on a seasonally adjusted basis in the last 2 months. That feels like some kind of odd seasonal quirk based on no Summerfest, no Brewers games and other work that isn't happening in the COVID World of 2020, but it doesn't necessarily explain why those individuals (allegedly) aren't looking for other jobs.

We'll see if that labor force number comes back up as Summer wanes and the school year looms. If so, we might not be falling much further below our current rate of 7% for quite a while. There's a lot of gaps left to fill in this state's employment situation, and with stimulus wearing off and mass layoff notices continuing, it seems likely that our economic recovery is going to cool with the weather.

You want to talk JOBS! in Wisconsin, Mike Pence? Go for it. Your record sucks

Apparently our Vice-President decided to parachute into a donor's Walworth County business to try to talk about, well....

And this was the general theme of Pence's bullshit words to the assembled "crowd" of dozens.

Today's unemployment math: "We added more jobs back to this economy in three months than Joe Biden and Barack Obama added in eight years."

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 19, 2020

Is that what they're going to go with? Are they going to assume the 2 months before then didn't happen, and that the world outside of Cult 45 doesn't know that we're still down nearly 13 million jobs?

It's especially interesting that Pence chose today to try to pull this BS on jobs, because right before he spoke, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest update of the "gold standard" Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. This report went up to March 2020, so the 12-month totals only reflect a small amount of the damage that happened once COVID-19 broke out. But it accelerated a slide in growth that happened in 2019.

The March QCEW report is especially big because it is used by the BLS to give their preliminary revisions for several months of jobs reports. That was released as well, and while not as severe as last year's downward revision of more than 500,000 jobs, it still was a notable drop from the numbers that were originally reported.

Put that loss of 223,000 private sector jobs on top of previous jobs reports, and you have less than 400,000 jobs added between March 2019 and March 2020, the smallest year-over-year growth level in nearly a decade. And it's especially bad for a couple of types of blue-collar sectors that Pence claimed Trump was saving during today's dog-and-pony show in Darien.

12-month change in jobs + revisions, March 2020
Mining
Jobs reports -40,900
Benchmark revisions -26,500
TOTAL CHANGE -67,400

Manufacturing
Jobs reports -21,000
Benchmark revisions -70,000
TOTAL CHANGE -91,000

Again, this is before COVID hit the economy full-force in April, with not even half of those losses gained back in the 3 months since.

It's also odd that Pence tried to pull this "JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!" routine in Wisconsin, because our state lagged the country for job growth when Republican Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans ran the state, and it got worse in the last two years under Trump. Q1 2020 was only an "improvement" in the sense that several other states had larger losses.

In fact, today's QCEW report said every state in the Midwest lost jobs year-over-year. In fact, Wisconsin's loss of 1,800 was the smallest out of those 7 states in that time period.

The next QCEW report won't be released until after the 2020 election, so we won't see how severe the losses were by the end of June. But Q1 was bad enough, and I can't tell whether I should laugh at Mike Pence for trying to convince Wisconsinites that the economy was fine today, or if I should be infuriated that he tried to pull over such a lie on people because he assumed they were too stupid to know the truth.

Ron Johnson - fool, crook, or Russian agent? Or all 3?

In recent weeks, our Dumb Senator - aka Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has been trying to cook up some kind of dirt on Joe Biden based on "information" given to him by Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainian agents.

<thread>

Here's @AshaRangappa_ and my deep dive into Senator @RonJohnsonWI's Monday letter and, more generally, his Ukraine-related investigations.

"How Sen. Ron Johnson’s Investigation Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation"#Disinformationhttps://t.co/c9cPzWNJK1

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) August 11, 2020

Lame enough, especially when the Homeland Security Chair should probably care more about our historic pandemic or with foreigners using fake profiles on social media to misinform Americans.

Johnson's twitter feed has become an increasingly frantic and desperate tinge to it, with multi-thread posts trying to justify this "story". And he looks even worse and suspect today, after the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee released this 966-page document today. The report shows more than ever that the Russians and Donald Trump's campaign were on the same team in 2016.

Per Senate Intellgence Committee, Konstantin KILIMNIK — who Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to — is "a Russian intelligence officer." pic.twitter.com/NQGcaOZ5PE

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 18, 2020

2.

Bipartisan Senate Intelligence report highlights Russian intelligence officer behind scenes of a Financial Times article alleging Ukraine interference.

Johnson-Grassley letter to Barr specifically relied on that Financial Times article.

Report (left)👇and letter (right)👇 pic.twitter.com/lxDFiTn8B6

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) August 18, 2020

But it's not like Ron Johnson didn't know about this. After all, Johnson was in the room when Moscow Mitch McConnell and other Republicans convinced President Obama not to go public about Russian intereference before the November 2016 elections.

Johnson said he attended a September briefing with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, FBI Director James Comey, and White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. The Washington Post, in its initial report on the CIA findings, described that session as an effort to win bipartisan buy-in for a public statement of support against Russian cyberattacks.

“They were assuring everybody there was no way Russia could hack our voting machines,” Johnson told Wisconsin Public Radio. “I don't know what changed from that briefing to this in terms of additional information.”

That's a mighty specific statement, RoJo. The Intelligence Committee report from today says nothing about voting machines, but does talk a lot about the coordination Russian agents had with the Trump campaign, and how both worked together on spreading misinformation to the public.

That's what Johnson was saying in December 2016. We now know he was clearly lying, both by omission (which is why he was so specific), and in pleading ignorance. A few weeks after Johnson made those statements, Urban Milwaukee's Bruce Murphy put the pieces together in a great report that asked "Ron Johnson Asleep on Russian Hacking?"

Murphy notes that Johnson claimed a lot of ignorance in the Fall of 2016 when it came to pre-election reports that Russians were targeting American voters with fake social media accounts and bots. Johnson reversed his prior anti-Russian stances, and chose not to expose the Russian psy-ops, keeping Wisconsin voters in the dark ahead of the election, and denied that he was in the loop.

Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.

Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.

Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election, Johnson issued a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.

Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.

Johnson also complained that Obama had failed to confront the Russia government with strength, even though the Obama administration had proposed a strong stand on cyber hacking which Johnson declined to join.

And the reason why RoJo is pulling this routine is obvious - the Russians and the NRA were working together to help Johnson and Trump in Wisconsin, and he will go to any length to cover up that fact, and the illegitimacy that goes along with it.

It's well past time Russian Ronnie gets thrown up on the stand before the House Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee, and have to answer why he continues to waste taxpayer money to obstruct and muddy the waters on non-issues, and lie to the public in an attempt to save his own hide.

And maybe our state media will finally dig deeper into a story that has been out there in plain sight - that one of our two US Senators has helped to lead a multi-year cover-up and partisan smear campaign in an attempt to hide just how much he owes to the Russians and their allies.

PS- And now Ronnie decides he wants to try to do his part to cover up deal with another Trump/GOP election scheme.

I look forward to Postmaster General DeJoy testifying at our virtual hearing this Friday. The Postal Service has had significant financial problems for years, and it is important for everyone to fully understand its current fiscal challenges. https://t.co/y6Mq4D47Yp

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) August 18, 2020

COVID-19 cases down in Wisconsin. But it's not down everywhere, and school is starting soon

Wanted to give a weekly update on COVID-19 infections in Wisconsin. On the surface, it looks like things are starting to go in the right direction, as we had a 4th straight weekly decline in cases, and deaths also went down for a second straight week,

Both numbers are still higher than they were at the start of July, but perhaps the state's mask mandate is starting to help get things in check compared to what it looked like at the end that month .

But the bad news is that the number of Wisconsinites getting COVID-19 tests went down significantly last week, and the rate of positive tests went back up to nearly 7%.

However, that decline does not necessarily mean that there are fewer COVID-19 tests being administered in Wisconsin, as Jermamey Jannene recently explained in Urban Milwaukee.

The daily report filters out people who are hospitalized patients that are being frequently retested, people receiving multiple tests because of concerns with symptoms, non-Wisconsin residents and people visiting one of the community testing sites multiple times with the same result.

Simply put, the number of processed tests reported every day by DHS undercounts the number of tests actually performed in the state.

A new, interactive chart added to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard attempts to close the data gap, showing the number of tests completed versus the reported lab capacity....

On multiple days in each of the past five weeks labs across the state have processed over 20,000 tests combined, while DHS has never reported a figure over 18,138. The result is a state that is much closer to using its reported daily testing capacity of approximately 24,000 than previously thought.

Perhaps this reflects more Wisconsinites deciding not to be tested if they are not showing COVID-19 symptoms, but it is still concerning that the percentage of positive tests increased last week.

Drilling down to the county level, the 3 largest counties in the state all had fewer new cases last week, with Milwaukee's decline being especially impressive in recent weeks, and Dane County staying at the reduced levels they reached 4 weeks ago.

That being said, you can see that Waukesha County's numbers are still nearly twice what we have in Dane County. And some places are going the wrong way, including the next two counties up Highway 41 from Waukesha (Washington and Fond du Lac). The next two counties up 41 had declines in the last week, but are still getting new cases at a much higher rate than they were in early July.

And the biggest per-capita breakouts of COVID have mostly been in the state's Northern counties, as this map from last week shows.

Know what all 8 of those "top" counties have in common? They all voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and Scott Walker in 2018. Why does that seem relevant?

Should masks be required in public? Among Democrats, 93% say yes, 5% say no. Among Republicans, 43% say yes, 54% say no. Among independents, 71% yes, 29% no. #mulawpoll

— MULawPoll (@MULawPoll) August 11, 2020

And the earliest adopters of mask mandates? Dane County and the City of Milwaukee, who have seen their new case numbers cut in half from their peaks in July. (Shrug)

While it feels like we've at least kept the pandemic from running out of control in recent weeks, school starts in 2 weeks and I'm already starting to see some of the college students coming back to Madison. This next month seems crucial for seeing if this state can start to get back to anything resembling the pre-COVID normal, or if COVID resurges yet again and makes for a gloomy and scary Fall.

How Walker's "leadership" in Wisconsin continues to hurt our state in 2020

With the DNC Convention coming up, there is likely to be a discussion about how things are going in Wisconsin, even if there isn't likely to be many events in Milwaukee. And you can bet that one guy trying to get a lot of face time will be former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker as a "local GOP voice" to counter what Dems will be saying this week. What talking heads should know is that in the last week, we've seen 3 different items that show how Wisconsin continues to be damaged from Walker's 8-year Reign of Error.

Let's start with the state's continuing lag in paying unemployment claims, which has kept tens of thousands of Wisconsinites from getting benefits for several weeks after COVID-19 shutdowns led to unprecedented layoffs. As this Fox 6 report from Milwaukee shows, you can go back to the Walker era and his GOP minions in the Legislature to see that a lot of these problems emerged due to past neglect.

Marilyn Townsend, Dane County attorney focusing on job-related issues, and Victor Forberger, labor and employment attorney, say the root problem is a familiar face. Former Governor Scott Walker says his unemployment reforms cracked down on fraud and gave people incentive to work, but Marilyn and Victor say the system is now too complicated. Their clients' claims are delayed or denied over things like student status, confusion over work search requirements, questions about jobs they held last year, and accusations of fraud when they make honest mistakes.

"They've made mistakes because the system is indecipherable," said Forberger.

"The system is not built for problems, and when people don't fit into a particular black and white question and answer, they are kicked out, and they are trying to figure out, how do I get my money?" said Townsend.

So what does Walker have to say about the mess he helped cause? Not too much beyond asking the state to pay money it doesn't have.

FOX6 News asked Walker for an interview. His spokesperson sent a statement calling for more staff to process claims, saying, "Governor Walker's reforms were aimed at lifting people off the unemployment rolls and into a job."

FOX6 News had a lot more questions, but Walker's camp wouldn't answer. We also asked Republican legislative leaders to weigh in. They did not respond, leaving the Department of Workforce Development to figure out where it can streamline without the Legislature.

(PS- How does Scott Walker have a spokesperson when HE DOESN'T HAVE A REAL JOB? And who's paying for that hack?)

Like many things with Walker, he tried to ignore taking any real action to deal with the looming problems in the state's unemployment system, and instead used lame poses like being "tough on fraud against people of color", which created more barriers that Wisconsinites have to deal with.

Another example of this is how Walker hastily borrowed a plan ahead of the 2018 elections to deal with the numerous problems happening at the state's juvenile Corrections facility at Lincoln Hills in northern Wisconsin.

But Scotty never put aside much money to get these regional (aka "Type 1") facilities built, only $25 million. $80 million was set aside in the next budget that the GOP Legislature and Governor Evers worked out, but it was still less than what was called for, and pushed some of the burden down to the local level.

With local governments lacking funds after the COVID-19 recession hit, and no real idea on how to close Lincoln Hills beyond Walker's words of "it'll happen", that plan may be imploding.

Dane County pulled out of an agreement with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to build new youth detention centers Friday, which could halt the state’s plan to close Lincoln Hills youth prison by 2021....

The memo outlined a number of concerns that fueled the county’s decision to cut ties with the program. Those included county operating budget concerns due to COVID-19, uncertainty surrounding any related funds from the state, the lack of developments on new regional juvenile correctional facilities to house youth offenders currently at Lincoln Hills once the center is closed, and unease about the lack of commitment to overall juvenile justice reform necessary to make a new system work correctly....

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said he was worried the county would become financially beholden to the state and required to accept serious juvenile offenders in a facility that isn’t equipped to house them if Lincoln Hills closes before regional Type 1 facilities are opened across the state.

“What we’re seeing is a lack of follow through, for one thing,” Parisi said of the state’s promise to close Lincoln Hills, the troubled juvenile detention facility, in 2018.

And while Scotty was underfunding his pre-election plans for prisons, he was more than happy to set aside billions in tax handouts and infrastructure for Foxconn 3 years ago. As Wisconsinites questioned why so much money was being gambled on this foreign company with little show for it before November 2018, Foxconn said they would team up with the state's flagship university to try to make people feel better about the scam.

Flash forward to August 2020, and like a lot of things involving the Fox-con, this hasn't worked out like the public was told it would.

Foxconn Technology Group gave no money to UW-Madison over the past year, renewing questions about the company’s commitment to its $100 million pledge to the university nearly two years ago.

UW-Madison received $700,000 in the first of a five-year agreement — less than 1% of the company’s overall commitment. Records show the university has received no additional money in the second year of the agreement.

Foxconn critics say the Taiwanese technology company has failed to live up to its promises, pointing to UW-Madison's struggle to secure what it was promised as just one example. UW-Madison and Foxconn announced “the largest research partnership in the university’s history" in August 2018, with Foxconn committing $100 million to help fund a new UW-Madison engineering building and company-related research.

The master agreement signed by UW-Madison and Foxconn, however, does not specify a dollar figure, instead stating broadly that the company “intends to make a substantial investment in research and other activities” with the university.

Today, UW-Madison is forced to make budget cuts and may have to make up an additonal $150 million in this school year due to a lack of state funding and a lack of other revenue in the time of COVID-19. Think they could have used some of the hundreds of millions of dollars used to upgrade highways by Foxconn and not have to waste time and money to meet one company's needs?

So when Scott Walker comes down from his donor-owned condo in Milwaukee and tries to get his goofy mug on TV, I'm hoping Wisconsin Democrats and news media are ready to ask ex-Governor Dropout why America should continue to mimic the GOP's methods in Wisconsin, when Walker and WisGOP left this state in such a mess after 8 years of their "leadership".

US consumers spending as much as they were before COVID. But will they spend more?

It's interesting that today's retail sales report for July was portrayed as a disappointment, because to me, the numbers seemed to indicate that consumer spending continued to recover at a pretty good pace.

U.S. retail sales increased less than expected in July as consumers cut back on purchases of motor vehicles, and could slow further in the months ahead amid spiraling new COVID-19 infections and a reduction in unemployment benefit checks.

Despite the moderation in retail sales reported by the Commerce Department on Friday, sales have recouped losses suffered when businesses were shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The third straight monthly gain lifted retail sales to their highest level since the government started tracking the series in 1992. It supported the view that consumer spending would rebound this quarter after a record collapse in the second quarter.

Retail sales rose 1.2% last month after advancing 8.4% in June. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast sales would rise 1.9% in July. Sales increased 2.7% from a year ago in July.

So even with tens of millions more Americans drawing unemployment checks, there was more money spent in stores and other retail outlets than we had before COVID 19 broke out? That seems impressive to me!

But then you dig into the actual Census Bureau report, and it's the differences between retail sectors that continue to stand out. The first part I wanted to bring up was the sectors that gained as COVID-19 broke out. Grocery stores, home + garden stores, and big box stores are still getting more business than they did at the start of the year, but have generally leveled off in the last couple of months and are now modestly above January's amounts. However, online/non-store shopping continues has barely dropped off at all, and continues to be up more than 20% vs January.

One retail sector went way down as COVID broke out. But since then it has had a big turnaround, and is now doing better than it did at the start of the year.

I have no explanation for this. Is it simply people having their purchases delayed as they were locked down, and then that pent-up demand is reflected in the gains in June and July? Or are a bunch more people buying board games, books and sporting equipment because COVID World makes these items more worthwhile to have? Odd stuff.

There are a few sectors that suffered major damage as the pandemic broke up, and still haven't gotten back to where they were in January. The first two are a direct reflection of the lack of travel and lack of desire to go out to eat in the time of COVID-19, and the other continues to reflect the shift to online shopping that is going on in the non-store sector.

The continued depressed sales for bars and restaurants and clothing stores means that these places have little need to hire back much of the staff that was laid off as those places closed in March and April. And that's where the danger lies for August and future months, because those ex-workers have now lost hundreds of dollars a week in unemployment benefits, and unless they all find jobs at a nearby Amazon warehouse (and numbers indicate that they are not), it seems certain that demand is going to suffer going forward.

Let's also not forget the crater that hit consumer spending in general for March, April and May. Sure, US consumers are spending as much today as we were in the start of the year, but that's still a lot of money that was taken out of the economy, and now the government support that kept many businesses and individuals afloat is going away, at least for a while.

Which means the back-to-school shopping months of August and September loom large as an indicator where the consumer is going to go from here. If things continue to improve, then you can see where the overall recovery out of the massive COVID-19-induced hole can continue. But if things level off or decline, things could cascade down into other areas very quickly. Many people and retail businesses barely survived the 4 months of declines earlier in 2020, and another drop in the 2nd half of the year could be a finishing blow.

An update on where Wisconsin's CARES money is going

We've had some interesting updates in what is happening with Wisconsin's allotment of money from DC that was sent to the state with the CARES Act that was signed at the end of December. This includes a rundown of where that CARES money is going from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which was sent to legislators earlier this week.

It's especially crucial because the state has to spend all of its CARES money in the next 4 1/2 months, and generally cannot be used for anything other than fighting COVID-19 and its social and economic effects.

The CARES Act laid out certain guidelines for the use of money received from the [Coronavirus Relief Fund], and additional guidance has been received from the U.S. Department of Treasury. Money that state and local governments receive from the CRF must be used for expenses incurred in response to the public health emergency declared in response to COVID-19. These expenses must not have been accounted for in the most recently passed budget, and must be incurred between March 1, 2020, and December 30, 2020. Money received from the CRF that is not used by December 30, 2020, must be returned to the Treasury. Furthermore, Treasury has issued guidance and provided answers to questions on what is and is not considered an eligible expense incurred in response to the public health emergency; notably, governments may not use the money from the CRF to replace lost revenue.

Most of that money has gone to the State of Wisconsin itself, and is able to be split up by Governor Evers without any veto power from the GOP-run Legislature.

The Department of Administration (DOA) has indicated that the approximately $2.0 billion in CRF monies were deposited to a DOA federal, all monies received appropriation [s. 20.505 Page 2(1)(mb)]. Because this appropriation is an all monies received appropriation, the administration can expend the total amount of funds received without additional legislative authorization. DOA has established a system for agencies to track the financial impact of the coronavirus public health emergency. Agencies have been asked to report any unanticipated expenses related to emergency response to the public health emergency, the financial impacts of canceling or rescheduling events, revenue lost from canceling or rescheduling planned events or from canceled or postponed state operations and services, the amount of cost savings resulting from rescheduling or canceling planned events, the financial impact of grants received or lost, and the fair market value of any donations received by a state agency from a nongovernmental source....

Consequently, in mid-May, 2020, the Governor's office began announcing a series of initiatives that would be funded from the state's share of federal CRF monies received under the CARES Act. To date, the CRF funds needed to fund the initiatives announced by the Governor's office have totaled $1.76 billion, with approximately $243.7 million remaining. These initiatives are summarized in the table below. Additional details on the intended purposes of the $1.76 billion in funding are also provided.

It took a few weeks for the Evers Administration to come up criteria to send out some of the grants and give businesses and localities time to apply. But much of this money has been going out in the last month, including the Small Business grants, farm supports, payments to hospitals, and purchases and distribution of PPE. I also note the $4 million in CARES money designated for the National Guard, which is being used to make up for the Trump Administration only paying 75% of the cost of the use of the Guard against COVID-19 (which I guess makes it all federal money anyway).

The Evers Administration also rolled out a new website today that lets Wisconsinites see what the CARES money is being used for in their community, and how much has been designated in total. It's got this pretty-looking breakdown of the funds.

Some of this seems to be a response from a criticism that GOPs in DC have been trying to throw recently, claiming that there isn't need for further stimulus because CARES money hasn't been getting spent. An example of this comes from something US Rep Bryan ("Paul Ryan's Chauffer") Steil sent out a couple of weeks ago.

Bryan Steil calls on Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to clarify how Wisconsin’s nearly $2 billion allotment from the CARES Act has been spent. The most recent public data from the U.S. Treasury Department found that 3.8%, or $75 million, of Wisconsin’s nearly $2 billion CARES Act money has been spent.

“The CARES Act provided $2.2 billion for the State of Wisconsin to spend on distributing PPE, helping workers get back to their jobs, reopening schools safely, and protecting people’s health. Before Congress passes additional funding, states should first use CARES Act funds. We must know why, four months after the CARES Act became enacted, more than $2.1 billion of the $2.2 billion in funding remain unspent,” said Steil.

This theme was repeated by Our Dumb Senator today.

Senator Johnson on WTMJ: No new COVID-19 stimulus deal until current package is spent. via @620wtmj https://t.co/eCZbBY6Rye

— The Wheeler Report (@WheelerReports) August 13, 2020

Steil and Johnson are not only being fiscally stupid by not wanting more stimulus in a time of double-digit unemployment and limited demand, they're also being dishonest. That's because the report Steil references is what the Treasury reported as state spending as of 3 weeks ago, and leaves out the fact that this is how the money flow from these programs works.

1. CARES Act passed in late March

2. US Treasury Dept spends weeks setting up criteria explaining what the money can/cannot be used for, and then sent it to the states in late April.

3. State finds out how much money they get, and then had to identify best use of the money, which came in just as COVID 19 cases were having their first peak and we didn't know how bad things might get, or what would be the best way to fight this thing.

4. State then has to set up criteria explaining how the money will be sent out, and to figure out who will handle these new duties. And then they need to give agencies, localities and people enough time to figure out the rules and apply.

5. Applications and reimbursements come in, they have to be evaluated.

6. Money gets sent out to the final recipients.

Well good luck having steps 3, 4, and 5 happen in 10 weeks while the state was also devising plans to control COVID-19, deal with the surge in unemployment claims, and all other everyday government activities. Unless you want to risk wasting hundreds of millions of dollars due to illegitimate expenses or private individuals and businesses who try to defraud the state.

But that's the type of cynicism you have when in today's GOP, when they're willing to pay any price to bail out corporations and give tax cuts to the rich and corporate, but God forbid we use our deficit to spend money to help anyone else that's in need during these tough times.

And given that (mo)Ron Johnson, Moscow Mitch and the rest of the Senate GOP have now decided to go home for the next month instead of do anything to stabilize the economy, it seems wise that Evers held back the last $243.7 million of CARES funds for the time being. Because with unemployment and COVID cases staying high with no extra money coming from DC, this state is going to need to find all the sources of money that they can to keep a lot of Wisconsinites from being left destitute for the rest of 2020.