During a graduate course I taught this fall for Virginia Tech, I presented a basic reality of the legislative process in Washington, D.C.: it often goes from the perfect to the possible to the passable. The new COVID-19 relief law is a perfect illustration, especially for older Americans.
Credit: Adobe
In October 2020, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would have provided about $2.2 trillion in emergency aid. For aging services programs, it constituted the perfect, with $1.175 billion allocated to elder justice programs, housing assistance, government nutrition benefits, nursing home strike teams and more.
Last month, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled their $908 billion proposal the possible. The final COVID-19 relief law ($935 billion), eventually signed by President Trump, became the passable.