Sen. Josh Hawley is perhaps the Senate GOP’s biggest contrarian.
A strong social conservative and populist, the Missouri Republican has repeatedly attempted to cast aside the GOP’s long-espoused (if not enforced) commitment to limit government, with nanny state proposals on issues such as social media regulation. Hawley’s iconoclastic fondness for sweeping state solutions is, unsurprisingly, manifesting itself in his response to the coronavirus crisis gripping the country — namely, the economic interventions he called for this week.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Wednesday, Hawley advances a sweeping proposal for government intervention into the economy on a massive scale. The senator clearly seeks to use this crisis to dispense with conventional conservative small government principles once and for all.
America is ready for a comeback. Congress needs to take action to unleash it – by saving every job in this country. I explain today in @washingtonpost https://t.co/6kzADUugL1
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) April 9, 2020
“Now is the time for bold measures to answer this hour’s need and position this nation to surge ahead once the disease is broken,” Hawley writes. “We cannot afford to make a few fixes to existing programs and hope for the best. We must think differently and be bold.”
So far, so good. Here’s where things get radical.
“Because the government has taken the step of closing the economy to protect public health, Congress should in turn protect every single job in this country for the duration of this crisis,” the senator declares. “And Congress should help our businesses rehire every worker who has already lost a job because of the coronavirus.”
Hawley continues:
Frankly, if I didn’t know the author was Hawley from the get-go, I might have mistaken these words for something Sen. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren penned.
Of course, Hawley isn’t wrong that even conservatives and libertarians can support a robust government response to the coronavirus crisis. They can certainly do so without compromising limited government principles. After all, the government is only intervening to repair damage caused by ordering mass shutdowns and quarantines as a last resort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. However, Hawley’s sweeping proposals go much too far and are rife with red flags that should set off alarm bells in any conservative’s mind.
He wants the government to “protect every single job for the duration of this crisis.” But what about the many millions of jobs that have not been interrupted by the coronavirus? It seems a massive overreaction to have the government swoop into the many industries where workers have, albeit with some challenges, successfully adapted to working remotely.
This is also why Hawley’s support for having the government all but pick up the entire country’s payroll and wages seems absurd.
It would be one thing if he was, for instance, suggesting targeted relief to keep workers in industries affected directly by the coronavirus attached to their jobs as long as possible. But the entire country? This not only would have a truly astronomical price tag, it would involve a government intervention into many industries where it simply isn’t needed yet.
There are also some clear unintended consequences that would come with the policy interventions Hawley proposes.
For one, having the government “help our businesses rehire every worker who has already lost a job because of the coronavirus” by giving them taxpayer-funded bonuses would seemingly create a massive incentive for more businesses to lay off and then rehire their workers, not just those businesses truly struggling as a result of the crisis.
So, too, heavy-handed government efforts like this are essentially an attempt to crystallize the economic status quo. There’s something to be said for how this would limit economic dynamism.
It’s possible that in a post-coronavirus world there are some jobs where it’s no longer efficient for them to exist anymore, while there are new jobs that crop up. These government interventions would prevent the economy from evolving, freezing the status quo, and preventing jobs from moving to new industries where they’re most needed.
It also stretches incredulity to suggest that the government could institute such a massive intervention just temporarily during a crisis. In reality, once government power and the welfare state expand, they almost never recede. If his proposals somehow become law, Hawley could unknowingly lay the groundwork for future Democratic presidents to exercise Green-New-Deal-level control over the economy, simply naming climate change or something else the “crisis” of the day.
Josh Hawley’s compassion for those suffering during this crisis is laudable. But the senator’s willingness to embrace sweeping, radical, and poorly-thought-out proposals is not.
