We’re not really ‘going back to normal’ after the pandemic

Critics and supporters of the federal government’s sweeping $6 trillion-plus "COVID-19" spending blowout essentially agree on this point. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called the latest $1.9 trillion bill "one of the most transformative and historic bills any of us will ever have the opportunity to support.” Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Michael Waltz blasted the package, only 10% of which is directly related to COVID-19, as the “largest expansion of the welfare state” in our lifetimes. They’re both right.

Yes, God-willing, as vaccines are injected into people's arms and COVID-19 case counts fade away, governments even in harshly locked-down and restricted states will allow their economies to reopen. But many government programs that have been created during the pandemic won’t be fully repealed, and new, previously unthinkable norms for regulation and blowout spending have been set.

Perhaps no example is more glaring than the uber-charged unemployment welfare system created during the pandemic.

Before COVID-19, the average person on unemployment benefits received $378 a week for a period up to 26 months. But in responding to the crisis in March, Congress created a “supercharged” benefit system, expanding benefits to entire new categories of workers, increasing the duration and adding a massive $600 federal supplement to increase weekly payment amounts.

After the first “stimulus bill,” workers got an average of $978 a week. The majority of workers could get more on benefits than they ever earned from working. The economic disincentive to work here is clear, but proponents assured us that this wouldn’t be a problem because it was “very temporary.” Yet, here we are one year later, and the federal government just renewed these supercharged payments through September, albeit at a slightly lower rate but one that’s still paying more than or close to as much as working for many unemployed people.

Despite the obvious economic dysfunction, it seems highly implausible that the augmented benefits are ever fully allowed to lapse or that the problem is rolled back to its original scope. There will be a strong constituency for maintaining this “new normal” and a high political price for any politician who dares to stop the cash spurt.

And we’ve now set the precedent that in times of economic downturn, the federal government can and should send people, even those with relatively high incomes and who haven’t lost work, thousands of taxpayer dollars in “stimulus” checks. The odds seem pretty high that despite the waste and ineffective “stimulus” of this initiative, a push for more checks like this will become a regular fixture of politics every time there’s a recession.

It sure seems like these massive expansions of the welfare state are, at least in part, here to stay.

One of the possible forces that could have triggered a backlash to these massive government programs has been utterly neutered by the “new normal.” Many understood the long-term perils of massive trillion-dollar deficits before COVID-19. Then-President Barack Obama’s big deficit spending launched a massive political backlash in the Tea Party.

Now? We’ve spent $6 trillion on “COVID-19” (I use air quotes because a lot of it actually went to crony carve-outs or partisan priorities) in the space of a year. Years of $1 trillion deficits look like frugal memories compared to the $3.1 trillion budget hole the federal government ran in 2020 and the multi-trillion one we’ll surely run this year.

We can’t understate the extent to which the Overton window, the range of acceptable or normalized political ideas in a society, has shifted toward huge government spending over the last year. In the medium-term, this can’t continue, as our runaway debt will lead to skyrocketing taxes to cover interest costs, bankrupt entitlement programs, a drag on economic growth, and a potential economic crisis.

But in the meantime, it may feel like monopoly money after the COVID-19 blowout. If the past is prologue, then, in the years to come, voters may be wondering: So, why can’t we have a Green New Deal? Why can’t the government give everyone a guaranteed income or “free” healthcare and college?

And all of this is to say nothing of how the public acquiesced to government measures amid an emergency, such as lockdowns, banning people from working, school shutdowns, and a host of other radical infringements on our liberty that would previously have been unthinkable. Now that such drastic action has been normalized, it’s much more likely the public will accept infringements in the future when presented with “emergency” narratives such as the “climate crisis.”

Socialist politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who want to overhaul our economy and expand the government far beyond previous norms, are surely licking their lips at the prospect of our post-pandemic politics.

While it pains me to say it, they should be. Our lives will hopefully return to some semblance of normalcy soon, but the unprecedented expansion of government power during the pandemic will plague us long after the last case of COVID-19.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a Washington Examiner contributor and host of the Breaking Boundaries podcast.