Joe Biden wants us to wear masks -- great. But what if there's no more actual Covid relief?
Shamefully, our Covid recovery plan has been relegated to Culture War talking points.
Joe Biden is earning high praise for urging Americans to wear masks and placing actual scientists on his Covid advisory board. It is a big improvement over the commander-in-chief urging us to inject bleach. That’s for sure.
But there’s only so much a president can do unilaterally. We need more Covid relief. Unfortunately, that can’t happen unless the Senate passes legislation, and given that Mitch McConnell still won’t publicly congratulate Biden on his obvious victory, we’re not off to a promising start.
Any Covid containment measures that don’t include financial relief for people and businesses are ineffectual. It puts Democrats in a position where they’re nagging and shaming, without offering support beyond mask mandates.
Republicans know that, and as a result, should be expected to do nothing — especially if they keep control of the Senate. They don’t care about actually governing. With Biden in office, their goal will be to obstruct, and then bemoan about gridlock all the way towards retaking the House in 2022.
This piece may seem unnecessarily pessimistic, since Biden’s transition team hasn’t even been given access to the federal government yet. But that’s exactly the point. The Trump Administration and complicit members of Republican leadership are currently blocking the rudimentary formalities of a presidential transition. They will look to damage Biden at every turn.
With coronavirus cases skyrocketing, the economic projections look dire. As state protections end, millions of Americans are at risk of losing their power and water this winter. While the padded $600 weekly unemployment checks stopped this summer, several million people will exhaust their base unemployment benefits in December. Without action, a federal unemployment program for gig workers will expire at the end of the year. A federal eviction moratorium for renters is scheduled to end Dec. 31 as well.
Last week, another 751,000 Americans filed for unemployment. Continued jobless claims — workers who have collected benefits for at least two straight weeks — stood at 7.3 million. That number will likely expand as outdoor dining ends and the hospitality industry is reeling. Industry surveys estimate 40 percent of restaurant owners expect to go out of business by March without more assistance. In September, the largest hotel industry group predicted two in three hotels would not survive another six months.
With promising news about a vaccine Monday, the stock market is soaring. It could continue to soar with encouraging medical news over the next several months. But as we know, the stock market’s performance is not a real-life indication of what’s happening on the ground.
Devastation promises to happen this winter if people are left with nothing. Ever since the passage of the CARES Act, our Covid recovery plan has shamefully been relegated to Culture War talking points: stay inside and wear a mask, or pound your chest and go to Applebee’s.
Governors and mayors continue to stress the importance of individual behavior. Here in Massachusetts, Charlie Baker has continually chided young people for hosting big parties, even though state data doesn’t show social gatherings are a significant source of outbreaks. On Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened more restrictions if cases continue to increase.
Nine months into a pandemic, draconian messaging is not the way forward. It is a way to foster cynicism, especially as cash-strapped states and cities are forced to make drastic service cuts, making life worse for everybody. Today, for example, the MBTA announced dramatic cuts, including the closure of all commuter rail stations at 9:00 p.m.
Without proper support to crumbling businesses and states, Democrats are only left with discouraging social gatherings and stigmatizing pleasure. In other words: they become the fun police.
We know containing the virus and saving the economy is a false choice. A slew of European countries, including Great Britain, have provided generous government programs to furloughed workers. But that’s what Republicans have argued since the start of the pandemic — remember the guy who said seniors would be willing to die for capitalism? — and it doesn’t look like they’re changing their approach. It was Trump, and not Congressional Republicans, who was pushing for additional Covid stimulus in the weeks before the Election.
If the economy craters this winter, and the Covid recovery halters, it is very likely Republicans will win back control of the House in two years. You don’t need a costly political science minor from Boston University like yours truly to know voters don’t stick with the same political majority during an economic depression.
Much like Democrats needed to prepare themselves for a president who won’t concede, they need to prepare themselves for a Republican Senate that will try and squash all Covid recovery.
Listening to science is a great and long overdue first step. But what happens next? A weary and fatigued country is losing patience.
Photo credit: "Joe Biden" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0