Coronavirus: US passes five million cases as Trump signs executive orders

Controversy has erupted over Donald Trump’s latest effort to deal with the pandemic, as the United States hits another unwelcome milestone.

Controversy has erupted over Donald Trump’s latest effort to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, as the United States reaches yet another unwelcome milestone.

The US has now passed five million confirmed infections, and continues to record tens of thousands of new cases each day. Its death toll, at 165,000, is the highest in the world.

And according to analysis from The New York Times, the true scale of the crisis may be even worse than those numbers suggest.

The newspaper has examined data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the government agency responsible for managing America’s epidemic, and found that there were actually 200,700 “excess deaths” throughout the US between March 15 and July 25.

The excess deaths statistic measures how many more people than usual have died during a certain time period, based on historical data.

So in this case, 200,000 more people died than in a regular year – a figure 54,000 higher than the official coronavirus death toll from the same period.

Experts have long warned that America’s death toll is underestimating the number of victims.

“The number is likely higher. I don’t know exactly what per cent higher, but almost certainly it’s higher,” Dr Anthony Fauci said back in May.

“Because given the situation, particularly in New York City, when they were really strapped with a very serious challenge to their healthcare system, there may have been people who died at home who did have COVID, who were not counted as COVID because they never really got to the hospital.”

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That grim situation served as the backdrop for Mr Trump’s decision, yesterday, to sign four executive orders addressing the pandemic.

The orders were intended to help Americans survive economically by extending unemployment benefits, deferring payroll taxes, delaying student loan payments and freezing evictions.

They came after negotiations between Mr Trump’s party, the Republicans, and his opposition, the Democrats, broke down in Congress.

The two parties could not agree on the scope of a stimulus deal. The Democrats wanted a package worth at least $US2 trillion ($A2.8 trillion), while Republicans insisted it be lower. There were also plenty of disagreements over what, specifically, should be in the bill.

“We’ve had it,” Mr Trump announced during a media conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The President slammed the leading congressional Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have chosen to hold this vital assistance hostage on behalf of very extreme, partisan demands from the radical left Democrats, and we just can’t do that,” the President said.

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Donald Trump speaking at his Bedminster golf club. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Mr Trump signing the orders. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Unemployed Americans were previously receiving $US600 a week ($A840), but that payment expired at the end of July.

Ms Pelosi wanted to renew it at the same rate, while Republicans argued for a lower amount, saying the existing rate would disincentivise people from returning to work.

Mr Trump’s executive order, following that logic, sets the payment at $US400 ($A560) a week.

There are some notable strings attached. To get any federal assistance, each state must agree to cover a quarter of the payment itself. Several states have already indicated they don’t have enough money to do that.

The payroll tax deferral applies to employees earning less than $US100,000 ($A140,000) a year. Mr Trump indicated he would make that measure permanent should he win re-election in November.

“I’m going to make them all permanent,” he said.

The Democrats oppose this idea altogether. They argue it will weaken the already perilous finances underpinning America’s Social Security and Medicare systems, whose trust funds are partly reliant on payroll tax revenue.

Earlier this year, the programs’ trustees predicted they would run out of money in 2035 – and that estimate was issued before the pandemic blew up the economy.

Mr Trump’s rhetoric on the eviction freeze doesn’t quite match what is actually in the order he signed. It’s not a ban on evictions – merely a memorandum authorising Health Secretary Alex Azar and the head of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention Dr Robert Redfield to “consider” whether such a ban is warranted.

Then there is the question of whether Mr Trump even has the power to follow through on his orders. The US Constitution gives Congress, not the President, control over federal spending.

“The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is constitutional slop,” said Senator Ben Sasse, a member of Mr Trump’s own party, after his announcement.

“President Trump does not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law. Under the Constitution, that power belongs to the American people acting through their members of Congress.”

Needless to say, the Democrats agree with him. But to stop the spending, they would need to challenge the President’s executive orders in court.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Ms Pelosi spoke to Fox News host Chris Wallace today, and echoed Mr Sasse’s assessment that the executive orders were “unconstitutional slop”.

“I understand that the President’s executive action doesn’t do all the things that you want, but having no bill at all, not coming to any agreement, wasn’t going to provide any of the things you want either. You’re known as a master negotiator, but didn’t you mess this one up?” Wallace asked her.

“You knew that the President was threatening to take this executive action. I understand that you weren’t going to get everything you wanted, but should you have cut a deal? And are you ready to go back into talks to try to come up with a fuller package?”

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“Well clearly you don’t have an understanding of what is happening here,” Ms Pelosi shot back at him.

“Both in the weakness of the President’s executive orders, which don’t give the money, enhanced benefit, but put a complicated formula there which will take a while, if at all, to put money in the pockets of the American people.

“When you look at the executive orders, the kindest thing I could say is he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or something’s wrong there. Something’s very, very wrong there.

“To characterise them as accomplishing what even they set out to do, as something that would take the place of an agreement, is just not so.

“These are illusions.”

She said Republicans and Democrats would still have to “meet halfway” and come up with a more permanent deal.

Mr Schumer put forward a similar argument in an interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.

“The event at the country club is just what Trump does. A big show, but it doesn’t do anything,” he said.

“As the American people look at these executive orders, they will see they don’t come close to doing the job.”

Mr Trump’s opponent from the 2016 election, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, joined the conga line of Democrats weighing in, this time on MSNBC.

“It’s a stunt. There’s no doubt about it,” Ms Clinton said.

“It’s most likely, as even Republican senators have said, unconstitutional. Bypassing Congress, trying to spend money that he has no authority to direct.

“But it’s also meant to be a diversion from the hard work Congress should be engaged in to provide the kind of relief that tens of millions of Americans need.”

She said she wasn’t sure whether Mr Trump “understood” that a payroll tax cut would affect social security and Medicare.

“You never know what he knows and doesn’t know about how the government operates,” said Ms Clinton.

“But basically, he was talking about ending the financial contributions we all make into social security and Medicare through the payroll tax.”

The controversy over Mr Trump’s executive orders comes amid renewed criticism of the US government’s coronavirus testing system.

Speaking on CNN today, Bill Gates slammed the CDC for failing to address delays in testing, which are forcing some patients to wait weeks to find out whether they have the virus.

"Our testing, of course, to this day, it's mind-blowing that because you can't get the federal government to improve the testing because they just want to say how great it is," Bill Gates says about the Covid-19 "testing insanity" in the US. pic.twitter.com/OKhosJiXNh

— CNN (@CNN) August 9, 2020

“It’s mind-blowing, because you can’t get the federal government to improve the testing, because they just want to say how great it is,” Mr Gates said.

“You know, I’ve said to them, ‘Look, have a CDC website that prioritises who gets tested.’ That’s trivial to do. They won’t pay attention to that.

“No other country has the testing insanity, because they won’t talk about fixing it, because they think they need to just keep acting like they’ve done a competent job.”