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President Trump has told aides he is largely supportive of sending Americans another round of stimulus checks, believing the payments will boost the economy and help his chances at reelection in November, the Washington Post reported. However, leading congressional Republicans and some senior White House officials remain skeptical of sending more checks, creating a rift within conservative circles that could have significant consequences for the stimulus package set to be taken up by lawmakers in July. The White House has not officially taken a position on the matter. In March, Congress approved stimulus payments of up to $1,200 per person for every American citizen earning less than $75,000 per year as part of the CARES Act. The Internal Revenue Service had, as of the beginning of June, sent these payments to more than 159 million American households. Many economists say the checks provided needed relief as unemployment surged across the country, but they also generated significant controversy because of glitches in getting the money to taxpayers and the Treasury Department’s decision to put Trump’s name on the mailed checks, as well as a letter that included his 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” House Democrats included another round of $1,200 stimulus checks in the bill they approved last month, but the GOP position on the measure has remained murky.

Americans have skipped payments on more than 100 million student loans, auto loans and other forms of debt since the coronavirus hit the U.S., the latest sign of the toll the pandemic is taking on people’s finances, the Wall Street Journal reported. The number of accounts that enrolled in deferment, forbearance or some other type of relief since March 1 and remain in such a state rose to 106 million at the end of May, triple the number at the end of April, according to credit-reporting firm TransUnion. The largest increase occurred for student loans, with 79 million accounts in deferment or other relief status, up from 18 million a month earlier. Auto loans in some type of deferment doubled to 7.3 million accounts. Personal loans in deferment doubled to 1.3 million accounts. The surge in missed payments suggests that the flood of layoffs related to the coronavirus has left many Americans without the means to keep up with their debts. Many people have used up their stimulus checks, and unemployment benefits in high-cost areas aren’t enough to replace paychecks or to help debt-laden borrowers pay down their bills. In some cases, the government is instructing companies to let borrowers defer their loans. The stimulus package signed into law in March, for example, allowed most borrowers to stop making monthly payments through Sept. 30 on federal student loans. The stimulus package also allowed homeowners hurt by the coronavirus or its economic fallout to ask their mortgage servicers for permission to pause their payments for up to 12 months.

Two committees will be holding hearings today in the Senate and House of Representatives looking at key issues amid the economic fallout due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Jovita Carranza, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will testify before the Senate Small Business Committee for a hearing at 10 a.m. ET titled "Implementation of Title I of the CARES Act." Click here for more information. 

Also today, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance will hold a hearing at noon ET titled "The Rent Is Still Due: America's Renters, Covid-19 and an Unprecedented Eviction Crisis." To view the legislation being considered, the hearing witness list and a link to the live webcast, please click here. 

Two committees will be holding hearings on Wednesday in the Senate and House of Representatives looking at key issues amid the economic fallout due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Jovita Carranza, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will testify before the Senate Small Business Committee for a hearing on Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET titled "Implementation of Title I of the CARES Act." Click here for more information. 

Also on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance will hold a hearing at noon ET titled "The Rent Is Still Due: America's Renters, Covid-19 and an Unprecedented Eviction Crisis." To view the legislation being considered, the hearing witness list and a link to the live webcast, please click here. 

Black Knight reported that of all of the types of mortgages available, government-insured mortgages have the greatest share of loans in forbearance that have little to no equity, National Mortgage News reported. This could negatively affect how those loans are treated when the forbearance period ends, the company said. The great majority of borrowers with forborne government-insured loans have 20 percent or more equity in their homes. But "just 9 percent [of borrowers with forborne loans] have 10% or less equity — typically enough to cover the cost of a sale of a property — with another 1 percent underwater on their mortgages," Ben Graboske, president of Black Knight's data and analytics division, said in a press release. "Of course, this leaves a population of nearly half a million homeowners who may lack the necessary equity to sell their homes to avoid foreclosure in a worst-case scenario," he added. About 19 percent of Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Affairs mortgages in forbearance were at loan-to-value ratios at 90 percent or higher, the firm found.

The U.S. economy could take the better part of a decade to fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns, a U.S. budget agency said, as a series of surveys pointed to continuing weakness in global manufacturing, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan legislative agency, said the sharp contraction triggered by the coronavirus caused it to mark down its 2020-30 forecast for U.S. economic output by a cumulative $7.9 trillion, or 3 percent of gross domestic product, relative to its January projections. GDP isn’t expected to catch up to the previously forecast level until the fourth quarter of 2029, the CBO added. The roughly $3.3 trillion in stimulus programs enacted by Congress since March will only “partially mitigate the deterioration in economic conditions,” the CBO said. “After you get the initial bounce of economic activity simply from removing the lockdowns, I think what we’ll see is an economy that is running at a level of activity notably below where we were prior to Covid,” said Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist at BofA Merrill Lynch. The CBO analysis came as new surveys showed that factories in the U.S. and abroad continued to reduce output and shed jobs in May, though the pace of deterioration moderated as governments moved to ease coronavirus-related restrictions on their economies.