Tag Archives: jobs

Backwards

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The transportation departments of a number of States are backing away from transportation projects, infrastructure projects that they have been claiming are desperately needed. Their excuse? They “need” more Federal aid. The already allocated $15 billion isn’t enough, they’re bleating.

The States have this backward. They don’t need Federal aid—the dollars of taxpayers in other States—they need to let their own citizens get back to work, including, perhaps beginning with, infrastructure projects like these road projects.

The States will then get all the “aid” they need: directly, in the form of income and business tax revenues from those businesses and employees working on those projects, and indirectly from the general, vast pickup in overall economic activity that would result from releasing American citizens from homebound gaol.

House Relief Bill

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Here’s what’s in the House “relief” bill, written in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) kitchen where she could have ready access to her special ice cream. The bill was written with zero Republican input, zero Republican amendments, carefully limited debate on the House floor, and passed almost entirely along party lines; although the bill did make 14 Progressive-Democrats choke to the point of voting against it, and one Republican was too timid to oppose it.

  • $1 trillion in funding for state and local governments

Money that State and local government do not need. To the extent that Federal funds—the dollars of taxpayers who are citizens of other States—are needed in a particular State, those funds should go directly to the point of need: the individual citizens and those citizens’ individual businesses.

  • relief to wealthy residents of high-tax states like New York by waiving the $10,000 cap on the federal State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction for 2020 and 2021

These look like the same 1% that the Progressive-Democrats hate so much, and they look like the folks ex-President Barack Obama (D) disdained as having made enough money. But they’re not the same 1%—their the rich donors to the Progressive-Democratic Party and Party-supported causes.

  • explicitly omitting Hyde Amendment limits on Federal abortion funding
  • explicitly withdrawing the work requirement criterion for food stamps

It’s important to keep in mind, on that last, that the work requirement wasn’t limited to requiring actual work. In lieu of work, the recipient could seek work, train for work (vis., take community college classes, intern, etc), do volunteer work, and so on.

Other goodies include

  • student loan debt forgiveness
  • $25 billion for the Postal Service
  • $3.6 billion to states for planning and preparation of elections

That last contains a national requirement to hold elections by mail—the Progressive-Democrats’ unconstitutional attempt to Federalize our elections.

All that money, and all of it is irrelevant to the supposed need for additional relief from the economic dislocation to which the Wuhan Virus situation has led. The Progressive-Democrats could have passed an actual relief bill, but they’ve chosen—again—to hold relief hostage until they’re paid their ransom in the form of their leftist wish list.

The Progressive-Democrats also could have sat back and done nothing for the moment, following the Senate’s recommendation that Government stop throwing money around and instead observe the effects of the money already shoveled out into the firebox.

No. The Progressive-Democrats chose instead to provide in Bill form, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign platform.

How cynical. Especially during this period of economic distress.

Economic Recovery Post-Wuhan Virus

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Paul Hannon and Saabira Chaudhuri wonder, in their Wall Street Journal piece, whether we’ll have the V-shaped recovery that President Donald Trump confidently predicts, or whether we’ll have a swoosh-shaped recovery a la the Panic of 2008 recovery. They don’t, though, seem to recognize key differences between the two situations, beginning with the underlying causes of the two dislocations.

The Panic was driven by economics: a credit crunch. The present situation is created by a Government-mandated closure of our economy in response to the rapid spread of the Wuhan Virus and its perceived danger; economics has nothing to do with it.

Recoveries from these also will be driven by entirely differing responses, as well.

The Panic of 2008 had a swoosh-shaped recovery because Obama’s regulatory environment inhibited recovery with its excessive and excessively micromanaging regulations, which produced the slowest post-recession recovery since WWII.

Whether the recovery from the Wuhan Virus situation and its associated government-mandated turnoff of our economy will be V-shaped or swoosh-shaped is yet to be seen, and its shape will be heavily dependent on how timid employees and employers are about reopening and consumers are about going out and…consuming.

The present recovery also will be heavily influenced by Progressive-Democrat governors standing in the way of reopening and recovery with their excessive and excessively long lockdown diktats.

Economic Reopening, Resistance, and Perspective

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As States reopen for business, and as increasing numbers of businesses reopen and customers patronize them against State government encouragements or outright diktats to the contrary, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is nattering on that President Donald Trump’s policies are undermining the core pillars of our economic strength. In the meantime, the NLMSM is focusing ghoulishly on body counts and not mentioning any other relevant information.

The following table looks at some data for three States mentioned in one Wall Street Journal article, another State mentioned in a different WSJ article, and two States mentioned by Fox News.

State Wuhan Virus Deaths Wuhan Virus Recoveries Ratio of Wuhan Virus Recoveries to Deaths
Illinois 3,406 Not Reported
California 2,719 Not Reported
New York 26,682 58,006 2.17
Georgia 1,441 Not Reported
Michigan 4,555 22,686 4.98
Texas 1,095 21,022 19.20

Wuhan Virus data are from Johns Hopkins University’s CSSE Dashboard and were current as of 11 May.

Carefully ignored by Biden in his meandering and by the NLMSM in their panic-mongering are those recovery rates and ratios. Check the CSSE data—all of the States reporting recovery rates are reporting recovery-to-death ratios of at least 2:1, and generally much larger.

Progressive-Democrats in charge of their States, despite these favorable trends though, want to keep their States locked down and having no economic activity—all in the claimed name of safety. Of course the longer States stay shut down, the deeper will be the economic recession we’re facing at the end of summer and into the November elections.

Note, though, that wanting a recession explicitly as a means of defeating President Donald Trump in this election has been a key part of the Progressive-Democrats’ playbook for two years.

Be very heads up this November.

New Jersey Wants Federal Dollars

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But it’s not a bailout, Governor Phil Murphy (D) insists.

“I wouldn’t call it a bailout. I would just say this is a war, we’re at the front lines,” Murphy said, stressing that his state does not want federal help at this time for “legacy” budget issues that predate the pandemic.
“We know what we got to do with the old legacy stuff, we need help with the here and now: educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff.”

Of course…. To the extent that any Federal dollars should go to States, New Jersey for instance, those dollars should go directly to the educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff; they should not pass through the State government on the way.

And: to mitigate the fungibility of money, those Federal dollars should be matched by State dollars. A State government should not be able simply to reallocate the funds it would already have been sending to “the front-line stuff” to other purposes on the premise that Uncle Sugar is picking up the front-line tab.

…if we do not get significant direct and flexible financial support from the federal government, we will be forced to make many difficult decisions about programs we all rely upon and which we will lean on in the months ahead.

What decisions to make vis-à-vis excessive public pension commitments and payouts, for instance. Regarding excessive and overwrought regulations that cost tremendous amounts to enforce and tremendous amounts for businesses and individuals to satisfy, and so that divert monies from their more efficient allocations and thereby restrain economic activity and reduce revenues to the State’s government.

Difficult decisions, indeed.