$2.2 Trillion Coronavirus Rescue Bill Passes Senate Unanimously

This pile of money the Joker is burning may look impressive, but it's only a few billion dollars.Warner Brothers

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After all the last-minute posturing and outrage, not a single senator opposed the coronavirus rescue bill:

The sprawling legislation, which passed 96-0, would send checks to more than 150 million American households, set up enormous loan programs for businesses large and small, pump money into unemployment insurance programs, greatly boost spending on hospitals, and much more.

On Monday it was a $1.8 trillion bill. Then it was $2 trillion. Now it’s $2.2 trillion. That’s $400 billion casually tacked on over the course of four days. The Senate literally took the entire annual cost of the Obama stimulus program and tossed it into the pot as a sort of sweetener to buy votes.

This is especially impressive because I can’t find a reliable source to tell me exactly what that $400 billion is for. I mean, sure, it may not seem like much in the great scheme of things, but it still represents 25,000 tons of hundred-dollar bills. That’s a lot!

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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