The Boldest Piece of Legislation Ever Written in Modern History

By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News

04 April 20

ur country is now facing its worst crisis in modern history. We are in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that could lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and infect millions of others, and we are entering an economic downturn that could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Last week, 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment. This week that number doubled to 6.6 million claims — ten times higher than any other week on record. It is certain that well over 10 million people have lost their jobs — more than in the Wall Street crash of 2008.

In this unprecedented moment in modern American history, it is imperative that we respond in an unprecedented way. And that means that Congress must pass, in the very near future, the boldest piece of legislation ever written in modern history.

There are many, many issues that must be addressed in our response to this pandemic, and working together, we will make sure they are addressed.

But today, I am outlining a set of six core provisions that must be included in the next legislation Congress passes to support working people in this country during this horrific crisis. Please read them and add your name to say that you agree:

1. Addressing the Employment Crisis and Providing Immediate Financial Relief

There is little doubt in my mind that we are facing an economic crisis that could be even worse than the Great Depression. The St. Louis Federal Reserve has projected that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32 percent. In my view, we must make sure that every worker in America continues to receive their paycheck during this crisis and we must provide immediate financial relief to everyone in this country.

An important precedent for that approach was taken in the recent stimulus package in which grants were provided to the airlines for the sole purpose of maintaining the paychecks and benefits of some 2 million workers in that industry through September 30. We must expand that program to cover every worker in America and we must make it retroactive to the beginning of this crisis. This is not a radical idea. Other countries, such as the UK, Norway, Denmark, France, and others have all come up with similar approaches to sustain their economy and prevent workers from losing their jobs.

Our primary goal during this crisis must be to prevent the disintegration of the American economy. It will be much easier and less expensive to prevent the collapse of the economy than trying to put it back together after it collapses.

To do this, we must also begin monthly payments of $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in our country, and guarantee paid family leave throughout this crisis so that people who are sick do not face the choice of infecting others or losing their job.

2. We Must Guarantee Health Care to All

Let’s be clear: we were facing a catastrophic health care crisis before the pandemic, and now that crisis has become much, much worse. Already, 87 million people are uninsured or underinsured. Layoffs will mean tens of millions of people more will lose their current insurance — which will result in countless deaths and bankruptcies. Already in the last two weeks, an estimated 3.5 million people have lost their employer-sponsored insurance.

And as the pandemic grows, we are seeing more and more reports of people who have delayed treatment due to concerns about cost. In this pandemic, uninsurance will lead to deaths and more COVID-19 transmissions.

Therefore, during this crisis, Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one in America who is sick, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this national pandemic. Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future. But, for the moment, we must act boldly to make sure everyone can get the health care they need in the coming months.

3. Use the Defense Production Act to Produce the Equipment and Testing We Need

Unbelievably, in the United States right now, doctors and nurses are unnecessarily putting their lives on the line treating people suffering from the coronavirus because they lack personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, and surgical gowns. The CDC has directed health professionals to use homemade gear like bandanas or scarves and some workers at the VA are being told to re-use one surgical mask for a week at a time. HHS estimated that our country needs 3.5 billion masks in response to this crisis.

President Trump has utilized the Defense Production Act thousands of times for the military and for enforcement of his immigration policies, yet he has resisted using its power to save lives during the pandemic. That is unacceptable. We must immediately and forcefully use the Defense Production Act to direct the production of all of the personal protective equipment, ventilators and other medical supplies needed.

We must also utilize this power to produce antibody tests so we can begin figuring out who has already contracted the virus and has developed some immunity to COVID-19.

In addition, OSHA must adopt a strong emergency standard to protect health care workers, patients, and the public during this crisis. We must crack down aggressively on price gougers and hoarders, and use any means necessary to secure supplies.

4. Make Sure No One Goes Hungry

Even before this crisis hit, one in every seven kids in America was going hungry and nearly 5.5 million seniors in our country struggled with hunger. Already in this crisis we see lines at food banks and growing concern that our most vulnerable communities and those recently unemployed may struggle to feed their families.

As communities face record levels of food insecurity, we must increase SNAP benefits, expand the WIC program for pregnant mothers, infants, and children, double funding for the Emergency Food Program (TEFAP) to ensure food banks have food to distribute, and expand Meals on Wheels and School Meals programs. When necessary, we must also develop new approaches to deliver food to vulnerable populations — including door-to-door drop offs.

5. Provide Emergency Aid to States and Cities

Even as state and local employees like police officers, firefighters and paramedics work on the front lines of this pandemic, states and cities that pay their salaries are facing enormous budgetary pressures.

Congress must provide $600 billion in direct fiscal aid to states and cities to ensure they have the personnel and funding necessary to respond to this crisis. In addition, the Federal Reserve must establish programs to provide direct fiscal support and budgetary relief to states and municipalities.

6. Suspend Monthly Payments

Even before this crisis, half of the people in our country were living paycheck to paycheck. In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Now, with growing unemployment, families are facing financial ruin if we do not act quickly and boldly.

That’s why we must suspend monthly expenses like rent, mortgages, medical debt and consumer debt collection for 4 months. We must cancel all student loan payments for the duration of this crisis, and place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs.

Brothers and sisters: In this unprecedented moment in our history it is easy to feel like we are alone, and that everyone must fend for themselves. But that would be a mistake and a terrible tragedy. Now, more than any other moment in our lives, we must remember that we are all in this together — that when one of us gets sick, many more may get sick. And when my neighbor loses their job, I may lose my job as well.

Add your name to say you support these ideas to support the working people of this country during the coronavirus crisis.

Further, we cannot wait until our economy collapses to act. It will be far easier and less expensive to act now, in a very bold way, than to try to rebuild our country later.

If we work together and unite behind these basic principles of economic and health justice, I am confident that we will not only get through this unprecedented crisis together but that we will lay the groundwork for a better and more just America in the future.

In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders

"Working Together Is What Humans Are Built to Do": Social Trust Is Key to Stemming the Coronavirus Crisis

By Bill McKibben, The New Yorker

04 April 20

he coronavirus pandemic is now so sprawling that it has revealed the souls of tens of thousands of individuals, from remarkably kind nurses to online sellers seeking to corner the market for hand sanitizers (until finally deciding to donate them). One saga that we should not soon forget involves Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky. On March 16th, out of “an abundance of caution,” he said, he got an early test. For a week, while waiting for the results, he kept circulating in public, continuing his work on Capitol Hill (where he lambasted and then voted against a bill that would have offered free tests to all Americans), and even working out in the Senate gym and swimming in the Senate pool. The test results came back positive, and Paul then went into self-quarantine.

The reason to focus on this story is not to suggest that Paul is a selfish jerk; he is a medical doctor, for heaven’s sake. It’s because he is the foremost representative of libertarian philosophy in our nation’s Capitol, and that philosophy has helped produce the world we live in: one in which we struggle to solve both the coronavirus pandemic and the larger climate crisis. Last week, I tried to show how those crises were linked through the variable of time; this week, it’s social trust that’s the issue.

Ayn Rand and her novels—one of which, “Atlas Shrugged,” was once, according to a survey for the Library of Congress, the second-most influential book in the country —helped get this ball rolling. Rand’s novels are worth thinking about, because they’ve shaped the thinking of American leaders since the Reagan era, when Rand’s acolyte Alan Greenspan became the most powerful economic figure on the planet. This view of the world—that government is the problem, that we should free individuals and corporations from its clutches—has made it all but impossible to address global warming. The Koch brothers, for instance, came directly from this milieu; it was after the late David Koch failed in his Vice-Presidential bid on the Libertarian Party ticket, in 1980, that he and his older brother Charles became two of the G.O.P.’s biggest funders. Since they were among America’s biggest oil and gas barons, it was no wonder that they opposed restrictions on the fossil-fuel industry, but it wasn’t just self-interest: the government action necessary to tackle climate change is incompatible with their belief system. The right-wing syllogism became, I think, the following:

—Markets solve all problems.
—Markets aren’t solving global warming.
—Q.E.D.: Global warming is not a problem.

That’s not logical, but it is comforting if you’ve committed to the basic idea that, as Ronald Reagan once put it, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ” But, of course, that’s nowhere near the scariest sentence. Try: “The hillside behind town is on fire.” “The subway system is flooded.” “Your test came back positive.” “There are no ventilators.”

Old impulses die hard. Donald Trump—who once described himself as a fan of Rand’s and her book “The Fountainhead” because “it relates to business (and) beauty (and) life and inner emotions. That book relates to . . . everything”—has been using the pandemic to, among other things, drastically relax what environmental laws remain. Meanwhile, his economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNBC, “I just think the private sector is going to solve this disease.” As Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, said, when informed of Trump’s desire to “pack churches” on Easter, “Yeah. No.” In fact, the countries dealing best with the coronavirus are precisely those with high levels of social trust: South Korea, for instance, where a comprehensive national health system made sure that no one had to worry about getting a test or paying for treatment. Or the Scandinavian nations, which a United Nations report released on March 20th said are in the best position to deal with such crises. Nations “with higher levels of social trust and connections are more resilient in the face of natural disasters and economic crises,” it concluded, because “fixing rather than fighting becomes the order of the day.” It’s probably no accident that, in many ways, the Nordic nations also lead the climate fight, or that South Korea’s ruling party proposed a sweeping Green New Deal to confront the economic slump that the virus left behind. Working together is what humans are actually built to do.

Passing the Mic

The fossil-fuel-divestment movement has been one of the most productive fronts in the fight against climate change for nearly a decade, growing into the largest campaign of its kind, with endowments and portfolios worth twelve trillion dollars pledging to sell their fossil-fuel stock. But some of this country’s richest universities, including Yale and Harvard, have declined to join, despite votes showing students and faculty overwhelmingly in favor of divestment. So some Harvard students and alumni started a group called Harvard Forward, which, with a petition drive, managed to get five climate-focussed candidates on the ballot in the university’s Board of Overseers elections, which alumni would have been able to vote in beginning this week. (Harvard announced on Tuesday that, because of the coronavirus, it would postpone the balloting until midsummer.) One of them is Thea Sebastian, who graduated from the college in 2008 and the law school in 2016, and is the policy counsel for an N.G.O. called the Civil Rights Corps, where she “coordinates nationwide strategies to address race-based and wealth-based injustices in our criminal-legal system.”

Harvard is filled with scholars studying the climate crisis. Why do you think the administration has been so unwilling to follow institutions around the world and divest from fossil fuels?

Harvard has been an incredible leader on many issues, taking difficult stances that challenged accepted norms. Take, for example, our leadership on affirmative action. Take our stance on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Where our endowment is concerned, we haven’t shown this same courage. We only divested from apartheid after the moment had passed. And on climate change, we’re poised to do the same.

In my view, our reticence stems from a belief that investments and values are separable. If we’re doing good research and going carbon-neutral, we can make money however we want. It’s the same bifurcation—a line between profit and purpose—that describes much of our economy.

The thing is, this bifurcation doesn’t hold. Our investments are a crucial instrument of our values. That’s true both at Harvard and far, far beyond. We won’t fix climate change—or solve structural inequities—without building an economy where companies act and invest responsibly. I want Harvard to lead this charge. And, in my view, that starts with divestment.

Much of your work is on civil rights and structural inequality. Harvard is as close to the center of the establishment as it’s possible to get. Can it really play a role in dismantling systems it helped build?

Yes! That’s why Harvard must play this role. We currently have a society where economic fortunes are mostly determined by Zip Code and skin color. And, unfortunately, American higher education isn’t exactly helping. In many ways, it’s making things worse.

The thing is, Harvard has an incredible opportunity to address this problem. First, Harvard has an incomparable platform to amplify cutting-edge, exciting policies to increase diversity and insure that first-generation students have every opportunity to attend and succeed at Harvard. What Harvard does, given its stature, will percolate elsewhere.

Second, Harvard builds the leaders of tomorrow. If our curriculum encourages our students to engage these inequities, we can build new health, educational, economic, and other systems that genuinely ensure opportunity for all.

You’re right that Harvard is the establishment. So let’s use that. Let’s orient this establishment toward solving climate change, structural inequality, and the greatest challenges of our generation.

Describe how hard alumni had to work to sign a petition nominating you for the Board of Overseers.

The last petition candidates, in 2016, only needed approximately two hundred signatures to make the Overseers ballot. This year, Harvard Forward needed almost three thousand. Worse, the online process was so cumbersome that it was almost unusable. Given my experience in voting rights, I know that these things matter.

Harvard Forward cleared this enormous hurdle to make the Overseers ballot. And, looking to April, we’re more inspired than ever to make our campaign successful.

Climate School

Well worth reading: Eliza Griswold’s fine essay on how faith-based activists are giving up carbon for Lent because they “believe that being willing to make personal sacrifices encourages us to conceive of ourselves in the context of the larger system that needs to change.” (And, while we’re on the topic of religion, do not skip reading Pope Francis’s remarkably moving sermon, delivered last week to an utterly empty St. Peter’s Square. “Greedy for profit, we let ourselves get caught up in things, and lured away by haste. We did not stop at your reproach to us, we were not shaken awake by wars or injustice across the world, nor did we listen to the cry of the poor or of our ailing planet.”)

The week’s great gift comes from Greta Thunberg and her family: first, the news that they are on the mend after contracting the coronavirus, and, second, a new book, “Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis.” I confess that I picked up this book assuming that I knew what it would be about; I was wrong. The story of Thunberg’s school strike and the global movement it launched comes only in the last few pages; before that is an incredibly frank and beautifully written account, in the voice of Greta’s mother (and the opera star), Malena Ernman, of how the family figured out how to work with the neurological and developmental differences (Asperger’s, O.C.D., and so on) of Greta and her younger sister, Beata, and how those differences helped open them to a world that was hurting. In the worlds of both environmentalism and mental health, it became a classic the day it was published.

Scoreboard

The world is suffering through an unending skein of losses this week; there’s no use pretending otherwise. But, by necessity, indigenous communities have been forced to take a longer view of history than most of us, and they won two legal victories. In a huge victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, a federal court ruled that the government had failed to do a complete environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline before granting permits. Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, a judge decided that further consultation with the Mi’kmaq band was required before plans for a giant natural-gas underground-storage cavern could proceed.

Warming Up

To return to the theme of this week’s newsletter—“We’re all in this together”—the genre of great music from cloistered humans just keeps growing. (Can some TV producer please put together a weekly “Quarantine’s Got Talent,” and make it a celebration, not a competition?) A couple of my favorites, which may have already shown up on your timeline: Daniel Matarazzo is clearly Tom Lehrer reborn—for rollicking public-health advice, this can’t be topped. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra has figured out video-conferencing technology. And Mirko and Valerio, homebound twelve-year-old Sicilian twins, have fiddled with Coldplay simply to make you grin.