26 Jan 2021 Biden COVID Bailout Bad for Poor, Minorities
For all of his talk about racial healing and justice, President Joe Biden’s new COVID relief plan is “far more likely to make Americans worse off, not better.”
In a Newsmax commentary, Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper writes that the approximately $1.9 trillion spending package promoted by the White House would “cripple economic growth, undermine personal responsibility and create an immigration magnet – in the process harming minorities and the working class the most.”
In addition to the Biden Administration’s embrace of demands for a $15 an hour minimum wage, aspects of this proposal would “double down on job destruction” that was decreasing before the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, Horace notes. And Biden could actually make matters worse:
This will preempt our economy’s recovery and likely lead to a double dip recession, pushing the working class and minorities to the periphery of the American Dream.
In particular, Biden is squandering his opportunity to really fix the economy by pushing a plan that increases reliance on the government:
Instead of using the bully pulpit to get states to reopen the way Texas and Florida have, this plan boosts unemployment assistance by $400 per week and dramatically expands eligibility as well as provides a 15% increase in food stamp assistance through September.
Biden’s plan flatly ignores the economists’ maxim that the more you subsidize something, the more you get of it.
Building on this error, the Biden plan also seeks to create a $350 billion “slush fund” to help bail out state and local governments:
Rewarding states like Michigan, Illinois and New York, which ignored the science of pandemics throughout 2020 and have consistently mismanaged state resources for years, is great for state employees (a key progressive constituency) but crippling for small business operators – black, white and brown.
And the economic downturn Horace anticipates as a result of these liberal programs and policies is exactly the sort of thing he says turned minority voters into Trump supporters. He notes that this change in views happened when “the improvements in their lives were noticeable – indeed dramatic.”
But now, Horace laments:
Tragically it’s just when they’ve begun to appreciate their gains – and became a vibrant part of the American Dream – that these new policies of the incoming president will reverse their circumstances.
To read all of Horace’s commentary – “Biden’s ‘Rescue’ Will Stifle Economy, End Personal Responsibility” – click here for the Newsmax website.
