Oregon officials will make nearly $600,000 in federal funding available to local strippers and sex workers who have lost income because of the pandemic, the Washington Post reports.

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that Congress should approve a coronavirus relief package before the end of the year, a shift from his recent suggestion that a measure was more likely early next year,” Politico reports.

Said McConnell: “We need another rescue package. Hopefully the partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election and I think we need to do it and I think we need to do it before the end of the year.”

Bloomberg: “For a few months this year, a U.S. government aid program meant for struggling small-business owners was handing out $10,000 to just about anyone who asked. All it took was a five-minute online application. You just had to say you owned a business with at least 10 employees, and the grant usually arrived within a few days.”

“People caught on fast. In some neighborhoods in Chicago and Miami, it seemed like everyone made a bogus application to the Small Business Administration’s Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Professional thieves from Russia to Nigeria cashed in. Low-level employees at the agency watched helplessly as misspent money flew out the door. Even after the $20 billion in funding for grants dried up in July, the fraud continued, as scammers looted a separate $192 billion pot of money set aside for loans.”

“The economy grew at a record pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, recovering a good chunk of pandemic losses but still below where it ended 2019,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Forecasters expect the economy to expand through the fourth quarter, though more slowly, amid a pandemic still disrupting lives and commerce as the virus infects tens of thousands of people a day. Analysts project the economy will end 2020 smaller than a year earlier, but grow in 2021.”

New York Times: “Already, there are signs that the recovery is losing steam.”

“The three months of squabbling over a new round of virus relief moved no closer to a resolution over the weekend, all but extinguishing the prospects of a stimulus bill being written, voted on, and signed into law by President Trump before the election,” Bloomberg reports.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s waiting for another counteroffer Monday from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, as she and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows accused each other of ‘moving the goalposts’ in negotiations.”

“Senate Republicans reiterated on Wednesday their stiff opposition to the White House’s last-ditch effort to cut a major stimulus deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the latest indication that passing any new relief package almost certainly will have to wait until after Election Day,” CNN reports.

“I don’t want to carry over the droppings of this grotesque elephant into the next presidency. We’ve got to get something big, and we’ve got to get it done soon and we’ve got to get it done right.”

— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted by the New York Times, on negotiating a new economic relief deal with the Trump administration.

Reuters: “Unless Congress and the Trump administration move past their deadlock over the contours of a new COVID-19 relief package and include financial relief for tenants and landlords, January will bring a surge in displacement and homelessness ‘unlike anything we have ever seen.'”

Goldman Sachs told clients that a Democratic “blue wave” in November could unleash the fiscal floodgates and fuel the amount of stimulus flowing from Washington, CNBC reports.

Wrote chief economist Jan Hatzius: “A congressional Democratic majority would likely result in substantially more fiscal support. We expect that spending would increase the most under a Democratic sweep of the House, Senate and White House.”

Goldman also reiterated its finding that the boost to U.S. economic growth would “outweigh the negative effects of tax increases.”