There was a perceptible sigh of relief when Congress, after months of delay, finally passed a coronavirus relief bill just before its holiday adjournment. It’s a 5,000-page monstrosity that no individual human being has read – a fact that roused well-merited criticism.
That wasn’t the worst thing, though. Once again, this $900 billion spending plan displayed the wrong priorities, continuing the warped thinking that has plagued public policy for years.
Missing from the bill was perhaps its most important element: $160 billion in state and municipal aid – let’s call it revenue sharing – that a bipartisan committee had recommended.
What hijacked this essential spending was another round of checks – Christmas presents, arriving a bit late – that will go both to those who desperately need them, and those who don’t need them at all.
It was a motley crew who engineered this diversion – Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Donald Trump and (ahem) Bernie Sanders – but it couldn’t have happened without Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has sworn eternal hostility to any resource-sharing with states and cities. McConnell said “no,” and, despite bipartisan consensus to the contrary, that was that, at least for now.
Republicans defend McConnell’s massive resistance by calling aid a “blue state bailout” primarily benefiting New York and California. It’s a charge some Democrats have unwittingly abetted, by referring to “backfilling” state budgets – an unappealing prospect.
The “blue state” contention, however, is poppycock. Some 25 states voted to make Joe Biden president, and 25 stuck with Donald Trump. “Red state” budgets show bigger gaps than many “blue” ones, both in large states like Texas, and smaller ones like Wyoming, North Dakota and Alaska, heavily dependent on energy extraction taxes.
And in fact, five Republican governors wrote to Congress to request this aid – all three of New England’s GOP governors, plus those in Arkansas and Maryland. More are sure to do so, especially as legislatures convene and their budget outlooks become clearer.
The current relief bill is only a palliative; as COVID cases continue to soar to previously unthinkable levels, financial demands on health care budgets, state and federal, are headed off the charts. Any return to financial “normalcy” is a long way off.
We shouldn’t forget how valuable the much larger CARES Act was in preserving Maine’s public sector, and economy, early in the pandemic. The $1.2 billion received then was categorical aid, but it tracked the most urgent needs and kept state output at 93% of 2019’s – better than most other states.
This resulted from two factors: success of Gov. Janet Mills’s early steps to contain virus spread; and that the $1.2 billion was a small-state minimum, meaning that Maine, like neighboring New Hampshire, got proportionately more help than larger states.
Now, it’s equally vital to understand why states need more money to maintain any semblance of adequate services at the height of the pandemic – and why the federal budget is the only place to go.
It’s truly simple: The Federal Reserve can print money to fund Congressional appropriations, creating trillions of new dollars. The traditional danger – inflation – is nowhere in sight, and though we’ll undoubtedly have to pay for this emergency spending over time, it still makes far more sense than allowing another economic crash.
States, however, not only can’t print money, but can’t, in each fiscal year, show even a penny of deficit spending. The alternative, raising taxes, is almost thinkable: In Maine, as at the federal level, we haven’t had a general tax increase in almost 30 years.
So the only alternative is to cut, cut, cut. Forget about new spending, on broadband or anything else. We might be able to borrow some, although Maine Republicans have, for a decade, blocked all bond issues except highways, and would have to rethink.
Instead, we can expect less money for schools and municipal revenue sharing, with higher property taxes, plus terrific strain on the Maine Care budget – the lifeline for low-income families and individuals who might otherwise get no health care at all.
This future is so bleak – and is so widely shared in states across the country – that even Mitch McConnell may blink after his Senate colleague of 24 years is sworn in as president. Though he waited forever to admit Biden won, McConnell’s remarks since then have been remarkably mild.
This collegial relationship – which, through lack of similarly relevant experience, wasn’t there for any other Democrat elected president in recent decades – could prove crucial is getting us where we need to go.
It may seem a thin reed on which to rest the fortunes of government amid pandemic, but it may be all we have.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, reporter, opinion writer and author for 36 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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