Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
States, cities plead for virus aid as Congress faces crises
WASHINGTON — One small-town Oklahoma mayor testified before Congress she’s worried the city’s 18-bed hospital can’t handle a second COVID-19 wave. Many counties are slashing sizable chunks of their government work force. States are staring down red ink as the fiscal year comes to a close.
Most states have budget deadlines with the new fiscal year starting July 1.
As local leaders are pleading for more federal aid — even before protests over police violence erupted in almost every corner of the country — the Senate resumed session Monday with no immediate plans to consider a fresh round of relief.
Instead, Senate Republicans are focused on ending the pandemic’s stay-home economy by trimming unemployment benefits to push some of 41 million jobless Americans back to work when jobs return.
The standoff is perhaps standard Washington negotiating, but “they’re playing a very dangerous game of chicken,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director at Issue One, which advocates for government reforms to ease political gridlock.
Congress is confronting mounting crises — the virus outbreak that’s killed almost 105,000 nationwide, the shattered economy and now protests over the killings of black people at the hands of police — all crashing into an election year. It’s a moment that calls for steady leadership. But the House is working remotely rather than risk convening in the pandemic, while the Senate wants to wait to see if nearly $2 trillion in previously approved aid is sufficient while it focuses on President Donald Trump’s priorities.
A bipartisan group of economists called on Congress to provide $1 trillion in additional aid to states and cities.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said roughly 3 million state and local government employees could lose their jobs in the next year — in addition to the nearly 1 million that have already been laid off.
“I can’t imagine a successful (relief ) package without that,” said Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia University and a former economic adviser to George W. Bush, on the conference call organized by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways & Means Committee, introduced legislation for a return-to-work bonus — two additional weeks of an existing $600 weekly jobless benefit if recalled employees go back to workplaces. Senate Republicans are mulling a similar proposal.
Republicans worry the $600 unemployment boost is preventing workers from returning to their jobs. They also want to develop a liability shield to protect businesses that do reopen from lawsuits related to COVID-19.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the Senate won’t consider the $3 trillion “grab bag” of the House-passed Heroes Act, which includes almost $1 trillion in aid to the states and cities.
Republicans who control the chamber will also focus on investigations Trump wants of the Obama administration’s handling of the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
McConnell on Monday urged the federal government to intervene if necessary to end the wave of national protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Reading the names as he opened the Senate, McConnell said Floyd’s death, along with those of other black Americans — Ahmaud Arbery and, in his home state of Kentucky, Breonna Taylor — do not appear to be three isolated incidents but rather “the latest chapter in our national struggle to make equal justice and equal protection under the law a fact of life for all Americans.”
In urging action from Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday linked Floyd’s death to the “injustice” of the virus outbreak’s effect on minority populations.
Democrats are focusing on a legislative response to the police involvement in Floyd’s death, including a proposal Monday from Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., for an overhaul of law enforcement tactics.