The White House Gave Up On The Key To Economic Recovery
Congress sprung into action this spring to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and economists generally agree that the massive $2 trillion legislation they passed in March actually worked to keep millions of Americans afloat.
But the relief from the CARES Act is gone. Enhanced unemployment payments ended this summer and those $1200 relief checks were spent. And though economic growth has picked up considerably since the depths of March ― GDP numbers out later Wednesday morning are expected to be very good ― the economy certainly hasn’t bounced back to pre-Covid levels.
With coronavirus cases again rising, hitting new records in the U.S. over the weekend, the question is: Now what? Republican senators are dithering on passing another relief package, which economists say is absolutely necessary as millions face unemployment, eviction and hunger.
But fiscal relief, as crucial as it is, is a Band-Aid. The key to economic recovery during a pandemic is, as it’s always been, to fix the public health crisis. This is something the Trump administration and its Republican allies seem not to understand. Indeed, the White House seems to have given up on containing the virus, pinning its hopes now on a vaccine.
Economic policies can “ameliorate and clean up a little of the mess left from inadequate public health measures,” said Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard University and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama. “But they can’t make up for, and give you, a good economy when public health has failed.”
Furman and most other economists say Congress must act again, as a third COVID-19 wave bears down, to help struggling Americans get through it and to set the U.S. on a path to recovery with a mix of payments, unemployment aid and help to small businesses.
But those measures alone will not fix this mess. The economic downturn caused by the health crisis is unlike any other recession we’ve seen, economists told HuffPost, and...
