How Bernie blew it on the coronavirus ‘bailout’

Published April 2, 2020 6:54pm ET



Libertarian Republican Rep. Thomas Massie may have been the face of lonely opposition to the more than $2 trillion coronavirus economic rescue package recently enacted by Congress, at least on procedural grounds, but socialist Democrats didn’t like it much better.

Obviously, progressives didn’t object to the federal government spending vast sums of money to prevent an economic downturn. Even many conservatives and libertarians were willing to help workers and businesses who were hurt by a pandemic through no fault of their own, often because the government itself required employers to close for an indefinite period of time in order to halt the spread of a deadly, highly contagious illness. Unlike banks behaving badly, there is no moral hazard here.

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