It’s been nearly four years since Congress approved and Donald Trump signed a massive relief bill aimed at curbing the financial hardship caused by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. The CARES Act did its job. Approximately 25 million Americans temporarily lost their jobs, and that job loss was primarily driven by fear of infection rather than publicly mandated shutdowns, but public health Given the scale of the crisis above, the economic pain was much less than expected.
In fact, the percentage of Americans who were “at least financially okay” was actually higher in July 2020 than it was before the pandemic, according to a Federal Reserve survey. This is likely due to the availability of government assistance, such as one-time checks and checks, for many people. Unemployment benefits have been significantly expanded to more than compensate for lost jobs and businesses.
Moreover, concerns that generous aid during the pandemic would undermine America’s work ethic, meaning adults would leave the workforce and never return, turned out to be dead wrong. The title of a new paper from the San Francisco Fed is “Why are labor force participation rates among prime-age adults so high?” They point out that it is highly likely that they are acting as a force.
The CARES Act was therefore a major policy success. But given the recent political climate, I’m starting to wonder what would have happened if the Democrats of 2020 had behaved the same way the Republicans of 2024 did.
Imagine an alternate history in which Joe Biden, by then already a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, urged Democrats in Congress not to pass the relief bill. Just as Trump bullied Republicans into voting against the border security bill because he believed that reducing American misery might help Trump get re-elected.
Imagine the history of then-Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acting like current Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and blocking consideration of bills that seek to address national imperatives.
Indeed, it seems clear that the CARES Act helped Republicans politically. It is true that Democrats lost the White House in 2020, but the margin was less decisive than most expected, and while Democrats gained a majority in the Senate, the margin was minimal. is. If President Trump had presided over a full-blown recession caused by the coronavirus, Republicans would have done much worse.
And Republicans are still reaping the benefits of the 2020 coronavirus relief package. Republicans constantly brag about how much better the economy was under Trump, but Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave the White House with fewer Americans employed than when he took office. It’s strange when you think about it. The trick here is they’re acting like 2020 never happened. This trick works because federal aid has helped so many Americans emerge from the pandemic recession in good financial shape.
Now, the history of my imagination never actually happened, nor was it supposed to happen. First, Pelosi is not that kind of politician. Of course she is partisan, but as far as I know she has never engaged in political blackmail by holding the well-being of her people hostage. For example, in 2019, Trump ushered in a bipartisan agreement to suspend her debt ceiling and avert a potential financial crisis, in an agreement that Trump himself admitted “contains no poison pills.”
Even if Pelosi herself had wanted to participate in economic sabotage, her colleagues would almost certainly have refused to cooperate.
But Trump’s Republican Party (and recent events confirm that Trump truly owns the Republican Party) is everything the 2020 Democratic Party was not. They rejected the border security and foreign aid bill they had requested and negotiated, but it was far tougher than Democrats had hoped. And they don’t even try to hide their naked irony. They want to block the border deal. That’s because the deal could limit their ability to attack President Biden on the issue, even though it gives them almost everything they want.
Oh, and a good portion of Republicans, including Trump, want to block aid to Ukraine, but that’s because Vladimir Putin is their kind of guy, and he wants to block aid to Ukraine. Because I’m satisfied with watching them be coerced.
Biden clearly intends to make Republican obstructionism a major issue in his 2024 campaign — similar to how Harry Truman ran against a “do-nothing Congress” in 1948. – This time around, the Republicans have an extra edge of trying to do damage more or less openly. American interests for political gain. Whether this strategy will work remains to be seen.
But even if it goes well and Biden wins, even if Democrats regain full control of Congress, I worry about the future. One of America’s two major political parties is currently dedicated to gaining power at all costs, and is attempting to make the nation ungovernable if a Democrat takes the White House. How long can our democracy survive under these circumstances?