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moratorium for renters is legal and sustainable. But crushing humanitarian and
political pressure left him no choice but to take a chance on an emergency move.
The new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scheme was announced after
the White House, hampered by a Supreme Court ruling and Congress' failure to act,
had repeatedly argued it had no constitutional authority to extend the moratorium.
Biden himself said on Tuesday that the new moratorium may not be constitutional,
and is essentially an attempt to buy time to get backlogged funding out of state
coffers and into the pockets of renters and landlords alike.
The conundrum threatened to force millions of Americans who lost incomes during the
pandemic out of their homes in an appalling twist to what has already been an
agonizing year. The problem was that the moratorium expired on July 31 at a moment
when much of the more than $40 billion in funds already provided by Congress to pay
landlords for back rent for tenants is still yet to be handed out by states and
local authorities.
To head off mass evictions, the White House came up with a classic Washington fudge
-- not unfamiliar in an era of Capitol Hill gridlock -- in which presidents,
especially Democrats, have improvised with executive power to shield constituencies
from consequences of a malfunctioning political system.
The Covid-19 data backing up CDC's change in guidance