Horowitz: We don't need another bailout; we need to reopen


Daniel Horowitz · April 21, 2020 U.S. House of Representatives Wikimedia Commons

Why even have a Republican Party when, with control of two of the three branches of the political process, Republicans can't provide any vision or contrast in the worst crisis of our lifetime?

Once again, Republicans are falling into a trap of getting into a bidding war with Democrats on how much money to spend to treat a self-imposed problem without addressing the cause of the problem.

Here's the simple truth: If Republicans push to end the shutdown, curtail the unconstitutional actions of governors, suspend taxation and regulations for several years, and get the economy moving, they won't need more bailout bills. If, on the other hand, they continue the shutdown and won't address the other issues related to the cause and solution for the China virus, sovereignty, regulations, and supply chains, no amount of Monopoly money they print can cover destroying most small businesses in America.

The $480 billion bill pumps another $310 billion into the newly created Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses shut down by the government to incentivize them to keep their employees on the payroll. But they don't address the actual shutdown or get governments to end their unconstitutional restrictions, a power Congress possesses through the 14^th Amendment.

Furthermore, they fail to fix the unemployment insurance provision that works against the premise of the small business loan program. The entire purpose is to incentivize businesses not to fire workers. But in certain industries, the workers will now make more money on unemployment than on payroll, thanks to a provision from the last hastily passed bill. This is particularly true of workers in the restaurant industry , which has been the hardest-hit sector of the economy.

Next, the bill gives an additional $75 billion to hospitals. We certainly want to help hospitals at a time like this, but again, the root cause of their bankruptcy is not the virus, but the government-mandated shutdown . Most of the money goes to rural hospitals that were not overrun with COVID-19 patients but were shut down by arbitrary and unconstitutional orders to suspend vital procedures and medical care. Why not address the shutdown?

The bill also contains $25 billion for more testing. But as more information comes out about the virus, it appears that it has already been here for months and has spread to millions of people. We need more antibody tests. Moreover, Congress needs to spend time investigating why our government is going with only one model and ignoring so many countervailing studies from prestigious research that indicate lockdowns are either unhelpful or destructive?

This bill is full of provisions that try with one hand to put a bandage on an injury they are causing with the other hand. Why not have a debate on that other hand, rather than focusing just on the issues and premises Democrats want to discuss?

We have a severe and protracted suspension of the Bill of Rights by more than half the state governments, and Congress has an obligation to intervene under the 14^th Amendment. Yet they are acting as if everything is fine. Moreover, those illegal declarations of martial law are the cause of most of the economic damage Congress is now trying to subsidize.

How can a Republican-controlled Senate completely ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room causing the shutdown? Even if you believe we must spend more money now, at least get policy changes in return that will cure the problem so that we are not throwing more money into the same black hole every two weeks.

The only saving grace of the deal is that it does not include another bailout for the states and localities causing the shutdown, although the president seemed to indicate that would be part of phase five in the never-ending parade of spending bills.

What is so disgusting is that leaders in both parties give the Democrats what they want (minus one extra provision) and then demand it be voted on without any amendments or even time to read the bill and publicly digest it. That is how they typically treated post office naming bills over the years, but now that has become the modus operandi for every single important bill. This bill will get a voice vote today before anyone has understood it and will pass in the House by Thursday.

Why are there no votes on using the 14^th Amendment and the power of the purse to restrict state officials from overbroad shutdowns? Why are there no votes on deregulation and cutting taxes to invest in business rather than investing in a shutdown and having nothing to show for it but crushing debt ? None of the items from my original list of 15 ideas have been included in any of these bills .



Horowitz: 15 things conservatives must demand in return for coronavirus bailout package

Daniel Horowitz · March 18, 2020

One thing is certain: Nearly every Republican is going to join with the Democrats and the liberal elements of the administration to push numerous spending packages that could cost trillions of dollars when this is all done. They will not debate the merits of the provisions, try to better target them, or limit the cost. But conservatives should at least secure some policy victories for the American people that actually address the source of this health crisis in return for bankrupting us.

Congress already passed an $8.3 billion bill and is in the process of passing 12 weeks of tax credits for paid leave worth $105 billion, along with numerous increases in welfare programs. Democrats and Secretary Mnuchin already secured support for a third package that will bail out the airline industry among others and send $1,000 checks to every American, at a cost of $1 trillion . The administration is also asking for a discretionary spending package of $45.8 billion .

Well, if the bipartisan liberals are using this crisis to clinch /their/ priorities, shouldn't we at least widen the discussion to the actual policies that bring in viruses, stress our health system, and make us vulnerable to China while they are making us pay for the rope to hang ourselves?

The few remaining conservatives in Washington need to seize control of the narrative and should demand the following in return for support of the bailouts:

*Immigration Policy *

1. A limitation on Chinese visas and foreign students until benchmarks of transparency and cooperation are met by the communist Chinese government. 2. A permanent provision of law mandating the suspension of travel from source countries and secondary countries the moment our government becomes aware of the spreading of a dangerous virus. 3. A permanent provision of law stating that all immigration, refugee, and asylum processing must cease when there are restrictions on movement and commerce domestically. If it's bad enough to restrict movement of Americans domestically, it should be severe enough to suspend immigration, which is more likely to transmit global epidemics across borders. With this epidemic, it took way too long to shut that down. 4. A provision addressing how China is using immigration to suck out all our research and development, a problem recognized in a recent bipartisan Senate committee report .

*Maintain Order*

5. More funding for federal prosecutors: There is a growing epidemic of major cities ordering police to stand down and not arrest criminals or for jails and prisons to begin releasing criminals. The mix of businesses remaining vacant with criminals roaming the streets has the potential to create a second order crisis. Once we are spending endless sums anyway, we should beef up the federal prosecutors' offices for the next few months to serve as a backstop against the local jailbreak. If we are federalizing every aspect of our lives, we as may as well have the feds contribute to maintaining order, the core job of government.

*Regulatory Policy *

6. End ban on physician-owned hospitals: The biggest concern of our health care system, which is largely driving the push to restrict movement, is a lack of available bed space in hospitals. In general, we face a shortage in hospitals and affordable care due to the monopolies, mergers, and acquisitions of big health care conglomerates created under Obamacare. One of the most onerous, yet forgotten provisions of Obamacare was the ban on physician-owned hospitals. That provision needs to end immediately so physicians can compete with the conglomerates while extending access to care. Doing so would immediately spawn a revolution in health care and stimulate the economy. 7. Make telehealth great: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have temporarily suspended regulations on telehealth as well as some of the draconian privacy restrictions under HIPAA. The laws should be changed permanently to accommodate the better use of technology and communications to expand access to health care. 8. End FDA bans on private testing: Everyone is talking about how government failed to deliver workable testing kits, which could have detected the virus earlier and flattened the curve of the spread quicker. What is less known is that government banned private labs from testing them. The minute Trump suspended that regulation, we had a boon of effective testing kits sprout up throughout the health care supply chain. It's time this and similar regulations be permanently repealed. 9. End all unnecessary regulations that stifle the supply chain of vital goods and services, whether they are environmental or labor in nature. We need to keep supplies of all sorts flowing. 10. Medical Supply Chain Security Act: Pass Sen. Josh Hawley's Medical Supply Chain Security Act , which would ensure that the FDA monitors and sources shortages of ingredients and materials needed for critical medical devices and drugs, while expedited approval of those items to go to market. Hawley is right to suggest that if we are going to bail out industries, we should demand answers about where they are going to make their products.

*Fiscal Policy*

11. Loans instead of bailouts: If we are going to bail out industries because of a lack of cash flow, then make it temporary and targeted, not permanent and indiscriminate. Ditto for small business loans from the Small Business Administration. 12. Offsets: While we will obviously not pay for the entire cost, conservatives should demand at least a veneer of pay-fors. Sen. Rand Paul's idea of cutting foreign aid makes a lot of sense when our own country is experiencing such a crisis. 13. Refocus the mandate of NIH and CDC: The lead organizations dealing with public health crises have record cash, yet we are told they lack resources. Congress must reorient their mission away from fighting obesity and racism and make them strictly focused on public health management of crises that are too large for the states to deal with. 14. Index capital gains taxes to inflation and temporarily suspend other income taxes: As much as possible, the focus should be on cutting taxes, not handouts. Rather than bailing out Wall Street, we should borrow an idea Sen. Ted Cruz has pushed in the past to index the capital gains tax to inflation. This will inject more capital into the market. As much as possible, we should be encouraging work for those who can or must work or who can telecommute. Let's face it, a $1,000 or $2,000 check for every American is enough to bankrupt our Treasury but is a paltry sum if it's designed to replace several months of lost household income. Clearly, unless we are prepared to cut $50,000 checks to every American family, we have no choice but to balance encouragement of work with social distancing. The best way to do that, once we are going to suffer revenue losses anyway, is to slash taxes. We need a live economy to actually stimulate. You can't stimulate a nuclear winter. 15. Sanction China: Finally, it's time to divest and decouple from China. This begins by working with allies to sanction China until its government become more transparent about the source and timing of this disease. According to a study from Southampton University, there would have been a 95 percent reduction in coronavirus cases had China taken action and alerted the world three weeks earlier. Focusing a congressional response to this virus without dealing with China would be like focusing on 9/11 without studying the hijackers and al Qaeda.

Clearly, substantial sums of money will be spent in the coming weeks. But most of public policy is about finding the right /policy/ solutions, not throwing money at a problem. If we are going to throw an unlimited amount of money at the problem, someone needs to be guarding the gates to ensure that we actually solve the policy problems and prevent this from happening in the future, while limiting the pain in the short run.

Finally, through all of this, we must remember that all the debt we pile up on top of the unfathomable debt we accrued during a time of prosperity will be owned by ... China!

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative .



It is shocking how almost nobody in Congress recognizes the severe threat of creating so much debt and devaluing our currency. Before embarking on this path, why not verify whether the shutdown is even necessary? But alas, we can always count on Congress to engage in malpractice: treating a public policy illness directly created and continued by the same politicians, with the ax in one hand and the morphine in the other.

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative .