The Winter Mitch McConnell Created
Will we
have Covid-19 relief or jobless agony?
By David
Brooks
Opinion
Columnist
- Dec. 3, 2020, 6:30 p.m. ET
If we can’t get a Covid-19 relief
package through Congress in the next week or two, we’re sunk. It means we have
a legislative branch so ideologically divided it can’t address even our most
glaring problems. It means we have representatives so lacking in the willingness
and ability to compromise that minimally competent government will be
impossible, even under a President Joe Biden.
The problems a basic relief measure
would address couldn’t be more obvious. Under current law, up to 12 million
Americans could lose their jobless benefits by year’s end — a wretched
Christmastime for millions of families, which could spawn a wave of depression,
morbidity, family breakdown and suicide.
Millions of people could be evicted
from their homes. Thousands more businesses may close during the long winter
months before a vaccine is widely available. These are not failing,
unproductive businesses. These are good, strong businesses that would have
provided jobs and opportunity for millions of Americans for decades if they
hadn’t been hit by the pandemic.
Wendy Edelberg of the
Hamilton Project calculates that if nothing passes, the U.S. economy will be $1
trillion smaller in 2021 and $500 billion smaller in 2022.
The means to prevent this suffering are
also glaringly obvious. We did it less than a year ago with the CARES Act. All
we have to do is pass a version of what we did before. How hard can this
possibly be?
The $2 trillion CARES Act was one of
the most successful pieces of legislation of modern times.
Because of the lockdowns, U.S. economic output contracted by a horrific 9
percent in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the first quarter. But
because of the CARES Act, disposable household incomes increased by 10 percent.
The personal savings rate increased by 34 percent in April.
I don’t love big government, but
government is supposed to step up in a crisis, and with the CARES Act, it did.
Since summer, as the economy has
deteriorated, Congress has been gridlocked on how to pass a supplemental relief
package. At times Nancy Pelosi has been rigidly uncompromising, as if not
wanting to hand Donald Trump a victory. But the core problem is that
Republicans have applied a dogmatically ideological approach to a situation in
which it is not germane and is in fact ruthlessly destructive.
Some Republicans act
as if this is a normal recession and the legislation in front of them is a
conventional Keynesian stimulus bill. But this is not a normal recession. It’s
a natural disaster. The proposals on offer are not conventional stimulus. They
are measures to defend our national economic infrastructure from that disaster
over the next five brutal months.
I agree with Janet Yellen, Joe Biden’s
choice for Treasury secretary, who said, “The U.S. debt path is completely
unsustainable under current tax and spending plans.” But that concern is for
another day. Right now, we need to protect the workers and businesses that
generate wealth in this society.
Either we roar out of this pandemic
with the economic might and surging wages we enjoyed in 2019, or we endure another
decade of grinding stagnation, more populist anger, more people losing faith in
America. Microscopic interest rates make this additional debt a relatively easy
lift for us.
The 2020 election results have
powerfully strengthened moderates. After months of gridlock the moderates took
charge this week, crafting a bipartisan $908 billion relief compromise. Led by
Senators Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney and Mark Warner and endorsed
by a bipartisan group of House members from the Problem Solvers Caucus, it is
big enough to make a real
difference and
includes two thorny issues, aid to the states and liability protection, which
should, on the merits, be in the law.
This is how democracy is supposed to
work! Partisans stake out positions and then dealmakers reach a compromise.
This is a glimpse of the sort of normal-functioning democratic process that has
been largely missing since Newt Gingrich walked onstage lo these many decades
ago.
To their great credit, Pelosi and Chuck
Schumer embraced the bipartisan framework. Mitch McConnell went on the Senate
floor Thursday, pretended to soften, ignored the compromise and did not move an
inch.
McConnell may think the Democrats will
eventually come to him because something is better than nothing. But his
proposal cannot pass. Democrats in the House will not accept a complete
capitulation to McConnell on every front.
For the first time in
a long time we have a core group of moderates, progressives and conservatives
willing to practice politics — willing to work with the other party toward a
reasonable solution.
Talks between the moderates and
McConnell continue. But if McConnell won’t do a deal now, in the midst of a
clear crisis and under a Republican president, there certainly won’t be one
with more controversial issues under a Democratic president in 2021. If we
don’t see a Covid-19 relief measure pass in the next week or two, then our
democracy is existentially broken.
If that happens, McConnell should spend
Christmas with people thrown out of work and witness the suffering he has
caused.
David Brooks has been a columnist with The
Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to Character” and, most
recently, “The Second Mountain.” @nytdavidbrooks