Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks
President Donald Trump listens to a reporter’s question during the coronavirus (COVID-19) update briefing Sunday, March 22, 2020, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House.
No matter how differences between Democrats and Republicans get worked out in negotiations over the largest economic stimulus legislation in U.S. history to protect Americans from financial devastation during the coronavirus crisis, the nation’s political leaders are poised to achieve something they’ve failed to accomplish for decades including during America’s second worst economic crisis a decade ago.
Democrats and Republicans are working together to put real money into the hands of as many Americans as possible, expand health care, increase unemployment insurance and add other safety net protections for millions facing unemployment as a public health pandemic grinds major segments of the U.S. economy to a halt.
Providing needed relief to Americans in a national crisis should be the first priority of every elected official, of course. But when President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president, was inaugurated in January 2009, the Republican Party made a very different political calculation.
Because Obama was unpopular with many white Republican voters, elected Republicans refused to work with him, even to end an economic crisis devastating millions of American lives. Besides, the longer Americans remained out of work, the easier it would be to beat Obama in 2012. It was a cruel, unAmerican political decision.
Stimulus Package
When Obama took office, the Great Recession already had destroyed 2.6 million U.S. jobs in 2008 under Republican President George W. Bush and 800,000 more jobs were being lost every month. Instead of working with Obama to reverse that disastrous economy, not a single Republican in the House of Representatives and only three Republican U.S. Senators—Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, who later became a Democrat, and Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins—voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. That was Obama’s economic stimulus legislation providing an estimated $787 billion to create jobs and restore the economy at half the cost of the $1.8 trillion economic stimulus the Trump administration is now negotiating with Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.
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Shortly before the Tea Party backlash midterm elections of 2010, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it right out loud: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” For Republicans, defeating a popular African American Democratic president was more important than job creation and recovery from the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. So much for patriotism.
The Republican effort to attract racist, anti-Obama voters led directly to Republicans nominating and electing the unqualified, incompetent demagogue Donald Trump openly appealing to racial and religious bigotry, acts that will repel decent voters from the party for years to come.
Trump’s weeks of inaction in the face of a world-wide health pandemic have increased the catastrophic health and economic consequences for our nation. Don Trump Jr., whose dark, twisted mind mirrors that of his father, accused Democrats of wanting millions of Americans to die to make Dad look bad. Just the opposite. When Trump sent Congress a paltry (by government standards) $2.5 billion plan to fight the coronavirus four weeks ago, House Democrats increased it to $8.3 billion to restore public health protections and pandemic preparations Trump previously eliminated. Now Democrats are on board with $1.8 trillion Trump is finally seeking. They simply want to make sure it goes where it’s needed and not just to the usual corrupt, wealthy beneficiaries of Trump’s enormous tax giveaways.
Embracing the Playbook
And why wouldn’t Democrats be on board? Trump and Republicans have suddenly discovered democratic socialism. They’re ready to send $1,200 checks to every American to revive consumer spending shut down as Americans shelter inside from a dangerous contagion making thriving cities look like ghost towns. The original White House plan sent only half as much to the poorest Americans with the greatest financial needs until Democrats fixed that.
Both parties now are embracing the economic playbook of British economist John Maynard Keynes that Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt used to pull the U.S out of the Great Depression. Keynsian economics have become the gold standard for reversing the free fall of national economies in times of crisis—massive public spending to maintain jobs, wages and purchasing power until robust private employment returns.
It’s also led to the most popular Democratic protections for all Americans including Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Republicans fought every single one.
Dangerous economic threats require action, not just happy talk. For weeks, Trump was Herbert Hoover telling Americans prosperity was just around the corner as the sound economy he inherited from Obama plunged. A St. Louis Reserve Bank president predicted Sunday the unemployment rate could hit 30% from mass layoffs between April and June, worse than the Great Depression.
Now for the first time in American history, both parties appear ready to do the right thing to protect America in a dire economic crisis. It’s about time.
