Well, it took a while, but after some last-minute hesitation, President Trump signed the latest

pandemic relief bill into law on Sunday.

The $900 billion package has unemployment funding, money for vaccine distribution,

and $600 paid out to most Americans. When reason Trump held off is that he wanted those

direct payments to be $2,000. As of 3pm Wednesday, it's unclear if that'll happen as part of a separate

package. Regardless of how that all shakes out, one thing has been clear for weeks. The bill does

not have the funding that many mayors and governors wanted. This is a major problem,

so it's a major disgrace. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat,

vented at a press conference two weeks ago as the details of the bill were taking shape.

He joined a chorus of governors who say Congress has short-changed them.

Money from the last relief package has mostly run out for states. Tax revenues are way down,

and because most states are required to balance their budgets, there may be deep cuts ahead.

We have been talking about this for months since before the election, and then after the election,

people were supposed to put their politics aside and actually do their job.

Apparently that hasn't happened. Consider this. Facing massive budget shortfalls,

mayors and governors all over the country are making tough decisions, decisions that could hurt

the most vulnerable in our society. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Wednesday, December 30th.

At Planet Money, we are also grappling with what's going on in the world. We just don't know,

and you're still going to have to decide. So we call it economists like Emily Oster.

It's like we're fighting the pandemic by having a bake sale or something. I'm not going to

respect a bake sale. Listen and subscribe to Planet Money from NPR.

It's considered this from NPR. For a while in the summer, the economy was bouncing back,

...