Today is Tuesday, December 21st, and you're listening to The Morning Announcements

presented by Betches Media.

I'm Sammy Sage, and this episode is sponsored by Harper Wilde.

Harper Wilde makes bras that put comfort first.

Apparently, Omicron is competing with GameStop's stock price for the fastest rise of 2021.

According to the latest CDC data, the Omicron variant officially accounted for 73% of

new infections last week. However, in the New York area, the southeast, the industrial midwest,

and the Pacific Northwest, I'm not sure what that really even leaves out, it is now responsible

for 90% of new infections. For some perspective on how fast that went, more than 99.5% of COVID cases

were Delta at the end of November. Looks like Delta's star burned out faster than Coney 2012.

Let's circle back to yesterday's news about how Biden's $2 trillion buildback better bill

is looking more like the buildback never bill. Sorry, I've been rewatching a lot of old sex in the

city. Anyway, upon learning that Joe Manchin would not support the bill and that it will likely fail,

yesterday the capitalist overlords at Goldman Sachs announced that they are lowering their GDP

forecast and predicted that the failure of the bill will slow economic growth in 2022.

Meanwhile, new reporting reveals that Dirk negotiations on the bill between President Biden and

Joe Manchin. Manchin privately told colleagues that he thought parents would waste monthly child

tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, and that Americans would

fraudulently use the proposed paid sickly policies so that they could fake sick and go on hunting

trips. Which sounds to me like some sweet, sweet projection. But the upshot of his refusal to support

the bill means that the 36 million households who have been receiving a child tax credit since July

no longer will, despite the fact that this policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%.

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