The Problem Solvers Caucus $1.5 Trillion stimulus framework announced last week may not be everybody's precise cup of tea, but it does represent an unusual bi-partisan consensus on how the Congressional foot should get back on the federal stimulus gas peddle.
Today's announcement that new UI claims have 'held steady,' (actually they have ticked up by 4,000 actual individual human people) - should leave no doubt in anybody's mind that we are in a "reverse square root recovery," not the V recovery some rose-colored glasses-wearing politicians and fewer and fewer of their "expert advisers" are still claiming.
The longer Congress keeps its collective foot off the stimulus gas, the longer and tougher on working people, small business owners, and others lower on the economic totem pole the recovery slog will be over the next two or... X years.
And the longer and tougher the Greater Recession of 2020's recovery, the more state and localities will have to raise taxes to cover the increasingly unavoidable deficits caused by the tax and fee revenue shortfalls they have suffered as the result of taking the pandemic control steps recommended by federal health experts. Raising taxes at any level of government is about as pro-recessionary a strategy as any macro-economist can dream up in their wildest vicious cycle dreams, right?
And, oh by the way: the longer and tougher the recovery, the more inequitable our already-deeply inequitable socio-economic system will become, if the Great Recession of 2008--09's anemic recovery experience is any guide to what's happening now as we try to climb out of this, the Greater Recession of 2020- 202..X. Increasing income, wealth and health in-equality during a pandemic looks to me like an almost perfect formula for social instability and violence.
The Problem Solvers Caucus framework was developed by and is supported by 25 D's and 25 R's in a supposedly deeply divided House during an election season. But it has been pushed off the front pages - and possibly down the list of Congressional priorities - by RBG's demise, and the ugly drama of replacing her on the high court, DHS hearings, possible vaccine advances, etc., etc.
It is urgently important that this remarkable consensus be respected and used by the leaderships of both houses to get the stimulus gas peddle again pushed down toward - if not all the way to - the metal.
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