On The Money: Finger-pointing picks up in COVID-19 relief fight | Landlords, housing industry sue CDC to overturn eviction ban

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THE BIG DEAL — Finger-pointing picks up in COVID-19 relief fight: The blame game is heating up as it becomes increasingly clear there will be no new COVID-19 relief deal before Election Day.

Even as party leaders inch closer to a deal on another huge package, both sides are girding for the near-certain prospect that it won’t be enacted before Nov. 3.

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is laying the blame squarely on President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), accusing the GOP leaders of failing to put forth a package big enough to address the historic pandemic.
• Trump and McConnell are firing back, accusing Pelosi of stonewalling to score political points by denying Trump a victory ahead of the election. 
• And both parties are scrambling to protect vulnerable seats by casting the other as callous to the plight of suffering Americans — an eleventh-hour appeal to the sympathies of voters already heading to the polls. 

There are risks for both parties. The fierce jockeying arrives as coronavirus cases are spiking around the country, jobless claims are on the rise, and neither side wants to bear the political backlash of inaction. The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Scott Wong break it down here.

LEADING THE DAY

Landlords, housing industry sue CDC to overturn eviction ban: A group of Ohio landlords and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), a national trade group for the housing industry, filed a lawsuit Friday to overturn the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eviction ban.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the coalition of landlords and NAHB allege that the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Justice violated federal law and the Constitution with a national September ban on evictions.

• The CDC in September issued an unprecedented ban on evictions through the end of 2020 as a means to prevent tens of millions of people from facing homelessness amid the relentless COVID-19 pandemic. 
• The order has likely prevented thousands of evictions so far and won wide praise from housing and public health advocates.
• Even so, legal experts have warned that it would be vulnerable to a court challenge given its reliance on a largely untested provision of federal law.

I have more on the lawsuit here.

Biden presses Trump to release tax returns after report on China bank account: Former Vice President Joe Biden again pressed President Trump to release his tax returns during Thursday’s presidential debate, after The New York Times reported this week that the president maintains a Chinese bank account.

“What are you hiding? Why are you unwilling?” Biden asked the president.

The Times reported that Trump has a bank account in China and that the president’s business entity that controls that account paid nearly $200,000 in taxes in the country from 2013 to 2015. 

“Release your tax return or stop talking about corruption,” Biden said.

The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda explains here.

GOOD TO KNOW

• The median asking rent for a Manhattan home has fallen below $3,000 per month for the first time in nine years, according to a report released Friday from New York City real estate firm StreetEasy. 
• Bloomberg News: “Young Americans face some of the highest unemployment rates and that could have long-term consequences for the broader U.S. economy”
• More than 700 economists, including several Nobel Prize laureates, have come out against President Trump’s reelection bid.
• The Washington Post: “New federal rule will make it harder to challenge discrimination in the housing industry, lawsuits allege”
• MIT: “According to a new study… between March and August 2020, ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s downgraded approximately 25% of the collateral feeding into CLOs, but the total value of the CLO tranche downgrades was only around 2%”

ODDS AND ENDS

• A California appeals court on Thursday dismissed a challenge to a ruling requiring Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees under state law.
• The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday sanctioned a Russian government research institution for alleged use of a dangerous malware virus to target critical infrastructure facilities in the U.S. and in the Middle East.

Recap the week with On The Money:

• Monday: Sides tiptoe towards a COVID deal, but breakthrough appears distant | Expiring benefits raise stakes of stimulus talks | Stocks fade with eyes on Capitol
• Tuesday: McConnell says he would give Trump-backed coronavirus deal a Senate vote | Pelosi, Mnuchin see progress, but no breakthrough | Trump, House lawyers return to court in fight over financial records
• Wednesday: Power players play chess match on COVID-19 aid | Pelosi bullish, Trump tempers optimism | Analysis: Nearly 1M have run out of jobless benefits
• Thursday: Pelosi cites progress, but says COVID-19 relief deal might be post-election | Eviction crisis sparked by pandemic disproportionately hits minorities | Weekly jobless claims fall to 787K