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CBPP today released a statement from Robert Greenstein, president, on the Senate Republican proposal from for the next round of COVID relief legislation:
“The new Senate Republican COVID-19 plan announced today falls far short of meeting the needs of a nation reeling from a pandemic and economic crisis. It fails to provide anything close to the level of fiscal relief that states, territories, tribes, and localities need to avoid large-scale layoffs and budget cuts, which would prolong and deepen the recession.
It fails to respond adequately to the millions of households struggling to afford food or pay the rent — particularly Black, Latino, and immigrant households, which have been hit especially hard. And, partly due to these inadequacies, it fails to provide the U.S. economy with sufficient support despite widespread projections that the economy will remain weak for a considerable time.
This approach of offering inadequate help for households and states appears to rest on the hope that state re-openings of the economy will lead to a rapid “v-shaped” economic recovery. Yet that strategy has already proven a public health failure; it has led to a spike in virus cases and deaths and is now causing a number of states to reverse course.
In short, the Senate Republican proposal fails to come close to meeting the scale and nature of the challenges we face. The severity of the present crisis, not an arbitrary dollar limit, should determine the size of the legislative response.
Until the pandemic is under control, there is no responsible alternative to addressing the public health crisis, the deep and widespread hardship, and the steep economic decline, all of which are inter-connected. Policymakers should act now, in a bipartisan fashion, to craft and enact a more robust and effective COVID relief package.
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