The economic recovery that began after the coronavirus-fueled nadir of April has managed to defy all expectations, but the November jobs report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that our rapid unemployment drop has all but stagnated. With coronavirus cases reaching critical levels threatening hospital capacity and multiple highly-effective vaccines set to hit markets any day now, the latest jobs report signals a dire need for Congress to finally pass a singular, final relief bill — and for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop playing politics.
When she wasn’t palling around with celebrities over $12 pints of ice cream or illegally sauntering around a shuttered San Francisco salon without a mask on, Pelosi has spent much of the last few months blowing up coronavirus negotiations. The Californian, who reportedly hasn’t spoken to President Trump in a year now, failed to pass the $1.8 trillion coronavirus bill offered by Republicans and supported by Democrats as liberal as Ro Khanna. The November jobs numbers just go to show the beginning of what Pelosi has sown, in her own words, because she gambled that “a new president,” Joe Biden, would win the election.
Whereas economists anticipated the restoration of nearly half a million jobs last month, just 245,000 were added. The unemployment fell by just one-fifth of a percentage point, and a significant portion of that came from Americans who left the labor market altogether, discouraged from employers rendered legally unable to hire them. In short, an economically lethal combination of arbitrary lockdowns and Congress’s refusal to reimburse businesses for their losses is suffocating the naturally strong fundamentals of an economy that was roaring with tight labor markets and high consumption not one year ago.
Now that Pelosi’s chosen POTUS has won, paying off her bet on millions of lives and businesses, Pelosi has conceded that she’ll, in fact, take an even smaller deal than the one she accused Republicans of making too small.
PELOSI has held out for a big deal for 6 or so months. She said this morning that now that BIDEN is president, she is willing to do a smaller deal.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 4, 2020
Enough is enough. Thanks to the history marking innovation of pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and Moderna, we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. But for thousands of small businesses and millions of Americans to survive a few months more, it will require to develop the hundreds of millions of vaccines to bring us to herd immunity, immediate and singular relief is needed. Unemployment insurance has dried up. Rents are still due. Children forbidden from attending our promise of free public education still need to be cared for. Failing to pass a bill that could save our businesses and our people when the end of this national nightmare is near would be tantamount to getting the virus itself.
