WHAT NOW? 'Bringing back our economy will not happen via some magical legislative sleight-of-hand. Recoveries that restore economic health take time, and this recovery, after an unprecedented shutdown, will take considerable patience and calm'.

AuthorBresler, Robert J.

THE CORONAVIRUS experience has dominated our country and the rest of the world--and it is risky to peer into its aftermath. Too many "ifs" surround the event. The public health consequences are beyond any layman's capacity to write knowledgeably about them. The economic and political consequences may be profound, and the path to any restoration is fraught with uncertainty. Nevertheless, those are the issues we can consider.

In this environment, any step toward the future is complex. The U.S.'s past responses to severe challenges have been met with a large degree of bipartisan support--World War II, the early Cold War, and 9/11, for instance. So it must be today.

The first order of business will be to rebuild as quickly as possible a significant measure of economic activity, while keeping the virus under reasonable control and weighing the cost/benefits. Opening up the economy in one sudden precipitous step will risk the disease reappearing in a more-virulent form. However, waiting until the economy is so seriously damaged that social dislocation and misery are deeply embedded is not the way to go, either. Moving in a measured way is the challenge.

The shrill partisan voices that have dominated our media and political dialogue only will hamper the steps required for a successful restoration. The personal vendetta between Pres. Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, will make a difficult process more difficult. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News should reduce the partisan know-it-alls and add measured and informed voices. The political climate these cable news network promote inhibits the chance of reasonable compromise. They all need to act like responsible adults.

It is true that, in the last couple of years, despite their personal animus, Trump, being an economic populist and no fiscal conservative, was able to work with Pelosi and Schumer on large budget agreements. They acted as if the good economic times could continue indefinitely and ignored debt and deficits. Now, reality has bitten hard and its lessons need to be understood and translated into reasoned bipartisan policy. Trillion-dollar bailout packages cannot be shoveled out the door indefinitely and neither can any new trillion-dollar government entitlements be enacted.

Bringing back our economy will not happen via some magical legislative sleight-of-hand. Recoveries that restore economic health take time, and this recovery, after an unprecedented shutdown, will...

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