Chamber Members:
Hopefully everyone that had to dust off their snowblower (or shovel) this morning has recovered and is enjoying the snow-covered landscape. Today’s update shares an announcement from the Governor on vaccine sites, vaccine purchases by federal government to make sure everyone is taken care of, the hurdle facing a new round of covid aid, and the start of a process to repeal GOP tax cuts. Finally, we take a look at some info based on reports coming out from the census.
*Daily Coronavirus update brought to you by Silver Cross Hospital
Governor Announces 1B Vaccine Options
At the unveiling of a mass vaccination site in Tinley Park on Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said vaccinations will be done by appointment only. “I want to make it clear so people don’t go line up at their local pharmacy or line up at their local health department, we need you to make sure to make an appointment for your vaccination,” Pritzker said.
Illinois is scheduled to receive 126,000 doses of the vaccine next week, less than 4% of the Phase 1B population. “Until the vaccine supply improves, we will all need to be patient,” Pritzker said.
As the federal supply of vaccines increases and the state receives more vaccines, health officials say the state will launch walk-in locations and expand sites to additional providers like doctor’s offices and urgent care clinics. Sites run by the National Guard are now vaccinating Illinoisans eligible under Phase 1B. So are sites at Walgreens, Jewel-Osco, and CVS. By Feb. 1, additional pharmacies, including Hy-Vee and Kroger, will also begin vaccinations. Walgreens is providing vaccines at 92 sites across the state. Eligible residents can schedule an appointment here. Jewel-Osco will begin vaccinating eligible residents Tuesday.
Illinois health officials have launched a statewide vaccination appointment page on its website. Israel Rocha, chief executive officer of Cook County Health, said an online appointment will reserve a spot in line. “The website will only reflect appointments which the vaccine is guaranteed,” said Rocha. “We know there have been in other jurisdictions discussions about how vaccine appointments have been canceled. We are trying to avoid that.”
Appointments for those eligible can be made at www.coronavirus.illinois.gov. IDPH provides a map where residents can find vaccination locations and appointment information.
Administration to Buy Enough Doses to Vaccinate U.S. Population by End of Summer
The Biden administration on Tuesday said it would boost the supply of coronavirus vaccines sent to states by about 16% for the next three weeks and will purchase enough additional doses to vaccinate the U.S. population with a two-dose regimen by the end of the summer.
Senior administration officials said the federal government is working to purchase an additional 100 million doses each of the Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. vaccines, increasing the total U.S. vaccine order by 50% to 600 million from 400 million. Officials said they expect the additional doses to be delivered over the summer. The purchases will provide enough supply to vaccinate 300 million Americans in a two-dose regimen over the summer.
Even with the increase in doses to states starting next week, supplies aren’t yet sufficient for what is needed now, a senior administration official said. “It’s going to take a number of months for us to be in a position for us to say to Americans it’s open season to sign up for vaccinations,” the official said.
The administration will also start providing states with three weeks’ advance notice of their estimated vaccine allocations, updated on a running basis, to help with their planning. Governors had said allocations fluctuated under the Trump administration, complicating efforts to staff vaccination sites and manage appointments.
The Department of Health and Human Services will boost allocations to states next week to a minimum of 10 million doses a week, up from 8.6 million doses a week, for the next three weeks, a senior administration official said.
Biden administration officials also told governors that 5.7 million doses will be Moderna’s vaccine and 4.3 million will be Pfizer’s vaccine, the people familiar with the call said.
President Biden Plan for Covid Aid Facing Decision
President Biden is facing a tough choice just days into his administration on how to pursue coronavirus relief after his $1.9 trillion proposal got a frosty reception from Republicans. Biden’s big dilemma now is to shove it through or compromise.
President Biden must decide whether to go it alone by trying to pass his bill through the budget reconciliation process, likely with only Democratic support, or try to negotiate a deal with Republicans that would likely be substantially smaller than what he and most Democrats favor, a move that could spark progressive criticism but also increase the odds of being able to claim an early bipartisan victory.
The White House signaled on Monday that it was open to pursuing reconciliation, a budget tactic that allows certain bills to bypass the 60-vote filibuster, but argued that doing so didn’t rule out bipartisan support for the ultimate bill. “Reconciliation is a means of getting a bill passed. There are a number of means of getting bills passed. That does not mean, regardless of how the bill is passed, that Democrats and Republicans cannot both vote for it,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. She added that Biden wants a COVID-19 relief bill and is having talks with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The hat tip toward reconciliation comes as Biden is under pressure to reduce the overall price tag for the legislation after Congress approved roughly $900 billion in coronavirus relief just last month. Biden’s proposal includes $1,400 stimulus checks, more unemployment assistance, help for state and local governments, funding for schools and vaccines and a boost to the minimum wage. But it has no support from Senate Republicans amid pushback from members of GOP leadership and influential moderates, leaving it unable to get the 60 votes needed without reconciliation or eliminating the legislative filibuster.
White House aides spoke with a bipartisan group of senators and House lawmakers over the weekend on a Zoom call organized by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that lasted approximately an hour and 15 minutes, according to a source familiar with the call. During the call, senators asked administration officials for details on how they got to the $1.9 trillion price tag and how the previous coronavirus relief money is being allocated.
“This group … really wanted the data. A lot of the questions were: Where did that number come from?” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Democrats, told NPR, adding that the meeting was “more exploratory than definitive.”
GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who helped organize the call, said that while she supports more money for things like vaccine production, distribution, vaccinators and for testing, “it seems premature to be considering a package of this size and scope.”
The source familiar with the call said lawmakers widely agreed that more money for vaccines and vaccine distribution was a shared priority for any additional assistance. The bipartisan group is expected to meet this week to discuss a path forward.
DC Republicans Work to Preserve Trump Tax Cuts
Republicans are signaling a determination to protect their 2017 tax-cut law and prevent President Biden from making good on campaign pledges to partially undo the measure.
The tax law, enacted after GOP lawmakers sought for years to slash rates for individuals and businesses, was one of former President Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishments. But with Democratic control of Congress, Biden has new avenues for delivering on his 2020 promises.
Biden has called for rolling back the Trump tax cuts on people making above $400,000 a year and to partially reverse the reduction in the corporate tax rate. And even though he has indicated tax increases are not his most immediate priority, Biden has noted they could be a way to finance his spending priorities down the line. GOP lawmakers are nevertheless starting their campaign now to keep the tax cuts intact, arguing that it would be particularly harmful to reverse them during the coronavirus-related downturn.
Republicans have particularly focused on the 2017 law’s reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Biden has called for raising the rate to 28 percent.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is poised to become the top Republican on the Finance Committee once Senate committees are organized in the current Congress, argued during Janet Yellen’s Treasury Secretary confirmation hearing that Biden’s proposal to raise the corporate rate would “hit already vulnerable businesses and put U.S. companies once again at a strong competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.”
Yellen said Biden is not proposing to raise taxes immediately while the pandemic is hurting the economy but wants to repeal parts of the 2017 tax law that benefit wealthy Americans and large companies as part of a larger package that includes significant federal spending on infrastructure and manufacturing. She also said Biden wants to undo portions of the law that he thinks incentivize businesses offshoring operations.
“Although the corporate tax cuts, I think, did improve the competitiveness of American businesses … it’s very important that corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share,” she said.
She also said that the administration looks forward to working with other countries to try to stop a “race to the bottom” on corporate taxes.
Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee said that Republicans lowered the corporate tax rate to encourage companies to bring jobs and manufacturing to the U.S. and that there are several countries that have lowered their corporate tax rates since the enactment of the 2017 law. “If the president thinks the rest of the world is sitting around while we try to become competitive, they aren’t,” he said.
Republicans are also emphasizing they want to preserve a provision in the 2017 law that is strongly disliked by politicians and residents in a number of Democratic-leaning states: the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Repealing the SALT deduction cap is a priority of Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and many Democrats in high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey, and California. There is also some interest in rolling back the cap from some GOP lawmakers in those states.
Those who want the full deduction restored argue that the deduction helps states provide robust public services to their residents. But most Republicans, and some progressives, do not think the cap should be repealed, arguing that doing so would primarily benefit high-income households.
Several GOP senators asked Yellen about the SALT deduction cap leading up to her confirmation. Yellen said that before making a decision on the deduction cap, the Biden administration should evaluate the impact it has had on state and local governments.
Republicans are further pressing for the tax cuts for individuals in the measure to be made permanent. The law’s individual tax provisions are generally set to expire after 2025.
Yellen said in her written responses to follow-up questions that she “will work with members of Congress to address the expiration of various aspects of the 2017 tax law, including in particular those that impact middle-class taxpayers and families with incomes below the $400,000 threshold.”
Illinois Sees Second-largest Population Loss in County
Illinois lost nearly 80,000 residents in 2020, marking the seventh straight year of population decline. Learn more in a new analysis of population trends across both Illinois and the metropolitan Chicago region.
Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning has uncovered some other interesting trends about Illinois and the Chicago region, too. Illinois’ total population has declined by almost 2 percent since the beginning of the 2010s, further cementing the idea the state will lose at least one congressional seat in the redistricting process. Over that time period, West Virginia was the only state to see a higher rate of population loss.
- DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will counties are among only nine counties in Illinois that saw population growth since 2010. That means the vast majority of Illinois’ population losses have occurred outside of Cook County, the collar counties, and Kendall County (which make up the CMAP region).
- Top destinations for residents leaving Illinois include neighboring states (Indiana and Wisconsin) and high-population states (California, Florida, and Texas).
- The Chicago region’s growth rate is slower than other major metro areas. Compared to the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., the Chicago region ranked 46th in growth rate since 2010.
Click here to read the full report: https://www.cmap.illinois.gov/updates/all/-/asset_publisher/UIMfSLnFfMB6/content/population-loss-2020-census
What the 2020 Census Will Reveal about America’s Future
When the Census Bureau releases its decennial study of the American public this year, it is likely to show a population getting much older and much more diverse — and much less mobile.
Government statisticians are finalizing census counts that will be used to apportion both seats in the House of Representatives and billions of dollars in federal programs over the next 10 years. They will roll out formal census data, from state-level population estimates to block-by-block counts of residents, throughout 2021.
But many of the trends that will emerge are already evident, according to demographers. In interviews, half a dozen experts highlighted the trends they expect to see in the census figures and the concerns they have about the data currently being finalized.
Population growth is slowing
The post-war decades of explosive growth are over, and America’s population is expanding at the slowest rate since the first census was conducted in 1790. The nation’s population grew by just 0.35 percent between July 2019 and July 2020 — the slowest year-over-year rate since the Census Bureau began keeping track in 1900.
Population changes over the last decade has been defined by reverberations from the Great Recession, which caused a sharp drop-off in birthrates, and by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, a source of population growth in the past. At the same time, members of the baby boom generation are starting to die.
“The entire 2010s decade was one of fewer births, more deaths and uneven immigration,” wrote William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
What little population growth is happening is coming from older residents. The population of those over the age of 55 grew 27 percent in the last decade, compared to just 1.3 percent for everyone else.
The slowing trend is likely to continue over the next few decades. Based on current growth patterns, the U.S. population is likely to rise to 404 million by 2060 — half the growth rate that occurred over the last 40 years. If immigration continues at the pace it has for the last few years, the U.S. would have just 376 million residents by 2060.
Diversity is exploding
In the last decade, the United States likely added about 19.5 million people, according to year-over-year data. Because the white population declined, all of the overall increase is attributable to minorities.
About half of that growth, 10 million, came among Hispanic or Latino Americans. Nearly a quarter, 4.3 million, came among Asian Americans. There are 3.2 million more Black Americans today than there were in 2010.
The growth among Hispanics and Latinos is especially notable, Frey said, because it is now fueled by natural growth — people who are already in the country having children — rather than by immigration. From the 1980s through the 2000s, the number of Hispanics in the United States swelled because of immigration; today, the community is large enough and young enough to grow naturally.
Trends suggest the nation is likely to become more diverse as a younger generation grows up. The as-yet-unnamed post-Z generation — those born after 2013 — is America’s first majority-minority generation. Just under half of those children, who start turning 8 years old this year, are non-Hispanic white. By contrast, the aging baby boom generation is 71.6 percent white.
The baby bust is getting worse
Before the Great Recession, women were already having children at a later age. After the economic downturn, millions more delayed having children. And early signs show birthrates plunging even further during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I suspect a lot of women or couples decided nine months ago that maybe this wasn’t a good time to have a baby, with hospitals jammed with COVID patients, elective procedures being limited and risks of getting the disease growing,” Johnson said.
Johnson said there are 3 million more childless women in prime child-bearing years than demographers would have expected prior to the 2007-2009 recession. Those women may have delayed having children in their 20s, but now they are in their mid-to-late 30s, a time when fewer women opt to have children at all.
Demographics are shifting from boomers to ‘boomerang’
Part of the reason women are having children later is because more young adults — men and women — are living with their parents longer, rather than with a partner. A long slow recovery after the Great Recession coupled with rising housing and education costs have created a generation of “boomerang children” who return to their parents’ home during their first years in the workforce.
“So-called boomerang children have become more common over time as college debt has increased and adult children may return home after college to save on expenses,” said Jennifer Van Hook, a demographer at Penn State’s Population Research Institute. Van Hook said that trend, too, has likely been exacerbated by a pandemic that canceled college classes, closed campuses, or moved school online.
Americans are staying put
Blame higher housing prices for more millennials either living with their parents or renting. Blame the echoes of the housing bubble that burst in the Great Recession. Blame, in a lot of places, the lack of new construction and a dearth of affordable housing.
Whatever the cause, fewer Americans are moving than ever before. Just 9.3 percent of the population changed their official residence in the last year, the lowest figure since the Census Bureau started measuring moving trends in 1947, and about half the rate of what was typical in the 1980s and 1990s. And the 2020 figure was measured before the pandemic took hold. “The nation is in the midst of unprecedented demographic stagnation,” Frey wrote.
Young people decide the winners
Those who are moving are mainly younger, and they are largely moving to Sun Belt and Western states. Thirty-one states, most notably in the Northeast, the Rust Belt and the inland South, lost youth population in the last decade, while 19 states and the District of Columbia gained residents.
That trend, coupled with the rising number of aging seniors, means trouble for states losing younger residents. Fewer young people mean a smaller workforce, and fewer workers to support older Americans who are drawing on the social safety net.
But it’s good news for states adding lots of young people — places like Utah and Texas, where booming populations are likely to contribute to growing economies
Undercounts are likely
Most demographers are concerned that the 2020 census is likely to be marred by serious undercounts, especially among what the Bureau calls hard-to-reach populations.
Undercounts happen during every census, but they are especially acute for the 2020 tally. The Trump administration’s early efforts to include a question about citizenship on the census form, later struck down by the courts, sowed distrust in communities where some undocumented immigrants live. The pandemic limited the Bureau’s ability to conduct in-person follow-ups. And then the Trump administration tried to end follow-up counting prematurely, another effort blocked by the courts.
“The pandemic threw a loop-de-loop curve ball at the census effort. They’ve been planning this for over a decade and with thousands of temporary staff being on and off again, local get-out-the-count organizations running out of money and steam, and the deadline for ending data collection kept moving,” said Lloyd Potter, Texas’s state demographer and a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“Add to that the issue of the citizenship question being proposed, the effort to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the apportionment file, and the compressed time frame to conduct very complex post-enumeration processing and quality control efforts and you have the making of a demographer’s nightmare come true.”
States spent millions of dollars — sometimes hundreds of millions — on campaigns to convince people to participate in the Census. But at least one study of hard-to-count populations in California found that even reassuring messages were not enough to overcome skepticism, especially in Hispanic communities.
Making matters worse, the pandemic hit hard-to-count and minority communities the hardest. Anything less than a complete count puts at risk billions of dollars in federal program funding that the census itself helps allocate.
“It means that fewer financial resources are sent to your district, and so that means less money for your kid’s school, less money for infrastructure. It has real negative consequences for these populations,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist at Menlo College. “There is an overlap between communities that are hardest to count and communities that need financial resources.”
Program Notices & Reminders
SBA Page Links for Direction and Questions on PPP
https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program
1st draw info: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program/first-draw-ppp-loans
First draw app: https://www.sba.gov/document/sba-form-2483-paycheck-protection-program-borrower-application-form?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
2nd draw info: https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relief-options/paycheck-protection-program/second-draw-ppp-loans
Second draw app: https://www.sba.gov/document/sba-form-2483-sd-ppp-second-draw-borrower-application-form?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
Am I ready to apply for the PPP Second Draw Loan? This webinar will discuss how to apply for the PPP Second Draw loan and the PPP forgiveness process. This event will also cover eligible use of loan proceeds and best practices to follow for PPP recipients. Thursday, Jan. 28, 11 a.m.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/am-i-ready-to-apply-for-the-ppp-loan-second-round-tickets-137615544799?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
SBDC at JJC Update
Government Certification Process (with Rita Haake at COD) January 28th at 9am
- Certifications: Interpreting the alphabet to pursue profits! Which small business certification is the best one for you?
Your options:
• Federal: 8(a), EDWOSB, HUBZone, SDB, SDVOSB, WOSB, VOSB
• State: DBE, FBE, FMBE, MBE, PBE, VBE
• Local: DBE, MBE, WBE, VBE
You will learn the details of the application process, documentation requirements, certification options, and how to market and leverage certifications for the growth of your business. - https://ilsbdc.ecenterdirect.com/events/33909
Finally, here is the information for our first Legislative Coffee session in 2021 presented by CITGO this Friday afternoon at 1 pm.
Government Affairs Coffee Series with Senators Cappel & Connor
Join the Joliet Chamber and its Legislative Committee for an introduction to newly elected Illinois State Senator Meg Loughran Cappel and State Senator John Connor. We will hear about their backgrounds, views on the recent lame duck session, and thoughts moving forward about issues in the new session & the restore Illinois phases / tiers.
Friday, January 29th, 2021
1:00 p.m.
GoToMeeting Webinar Session
Please check your registration confirmation email for webinar log-in information.
No fee to participate; however, registration is required to attend.
http://jolietchamber.chambermaster.com/events/details/2021-january-29th-legislative-coffee-with-senators-cappel-and-connor-6000
Stay well,
Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry Staff and Board of Directors
Mike Paone
Vice President – Government Affairs
Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry
mpaone@jolietchamber.com
815.727.5371 main
815.727.5373 direct