As the United States ramps up its efforts to respond to COVID-19, trying to avoid the country going down the road of Italy and Iran, it is still a question just how many Americans will be infected before the outbreak is contained.
But where there is no doubt, is that nearly every American is going to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic economically:
- small businesses like restaurants and coffee shops that rely on a lot of foot traffic losing business
- low-wage workers who are going to miss work and may or may not get paid sick leave
- the impacts of COVID-19 globally pushing the world into recession
- the airlines, travel and tourism industries
- retail and service workers who normally have a lot of human interaction, having their employment disrupted
- schools closing and people having to scramble for child care
- major events like SXSW and professional sports being canceled, and all the lost revenue to local businesses that goes along with that
- people who are actually infected, which will likely incur huge hospital and medical bills even if they survive
While the Democratic Party like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are working hard to find ways to provide relief and aid to Americans, such as the $8.3 billion emergency aid bill they managed to get signed by Trump, and the most recent bill that is currently awaiting passage in Mitch McConnell’s Senate — a lot of the most impactful economic relief faces direct Republican opposition.
The solution that really needs to start being discussed in the public sphere, that mainstream American punditry seems to treat as if does not even exist, is a massive Keynesian fiscal stimulus, similar to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that helped through the crisis of the Great Depression.
The programs focused on what historians refer to as the "3 Rs": relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.
The fallout of COVID-19 and the global recession that it is fueling will likely require a similar focus.
A massive borrowing program would be capable of preventing the most extreme of bad ends for the vast majority of Americans. It could provide relief for people who lose their jobs, fall behind on paying debts, and rack up huge medical bills. It could help keep businesses afloat as they wait for the threat of COVID-19 to die down. People could afford to seek medical care that they otherwise would not have under the current for-profit US healthcare system. For people facing quarantine and isolation and the economic turmoil that may bring on them, having government financial support would likely make that more sustainable, and considering the threat of COVID-19 is currently very real, may help accelerate a nation-wide push of containment via closures and quarantine.
While enacting massive fiscal stimulus through national debt imposes a future financial burden on the country, it is something that the country is fully capable of handling. And if that financial burden saves several lives and staves off the worst economic hardships, then just as with FDR’s New Deal, it is an investment worth making.
The obvious criticism of this plan, is purely that Republicans oppose it. Regardless on if it is based on principle or not, such a plan will face Republicans that will block and vote it down at every opportunity.
Because it is not based on principle, after all. The so-called Party of fiscal responsibility have not cared in the slightest that the national debt has increased under the Republican currently occupying the Oval Office, Donald Trump. With literally no end in sight.
And even if Republicans do everything they can to block fiscal stimulus, let us not forget that this is an election year. If the Democratic Party were to publicly announce now that they will advance major economic stimulus, even via borrowing, to best respond to COVID-19, Republicans like Trump, many facing re-election this year, would then be on the record as having stood in the way of the largest response that the strength of the United States is capable of in the face of the very real threat of COVID-19. The Republican Party would have stood directly in the realm of sacrificing American lives at the altar of fiscal responsibility, that they don’t even follow when they are in control. If the effects of COVID-19 in the next few months includes major economic pain to millions of Americans, including many needless death, the idea that this would not weigh on Republican re-election efforts in November is highly unlikely. They would have to make the case, to an American public that just got through the COVID-19 outbreak, that they are the Party that Americans would want in charge during the next pandemic. I think that what the next few months will show, is that most Americans will be less inclined to agree.
Of course the following predictable criticism would be that the Democratic Party should not be politicizing a crisis like COVID-19. But it takes all of two seconds to find multiple examples of the Republican Party and Trump and their supporters already doing this at this very moment, so such criticism rings hollow. And even if that were not the case, that does not change the fact that it is in any case worthy of the Democratic Party making the case that a Democratic response like this to the COVID-19 crisis, is the best chance at both saving Americans’ lives, and saving Americans from economic ruin. If the Democratic Party’s proposals to combat COVID-19 can be seen as politicizing the crisis against Republicans in any way, that just further implies that Republican ideology only prevents a more comprehensive response to a disease outbreak like COVID-19 at best; and at worst, actually makes things worse.
So in my mind, the Democratic Party needs to make this message now and soon — whether it be through Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden via their respective Presidential campaigns, through current leaders like Pelosi or Schumer, or even in every avenue currently at our disposal.
Because it might be our best chance to save as many American lives, and many Americans from financial ruin, as possible.