Trump’s orders offer scant relief
Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week that California couldn’t support President Trump’s attempted extension of supplemental employment payments by fiat. But it didn’t take a West Coast Democrat to cast a vote of no confidence on Trump’s halfbaked diktat.
Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican governor, was noncommital about his state’s ability to pay for the extended unemployment insurance Trump promised, arguing correctly that negotiations with Congress should be the administration’s priority. Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who once professed that he could not think of a single disagreement with Trump, said the president’s proposal was “not an option for us.”
The bipartisan consensus reflected the sheer inadequacy of the executive orders Trump signed last weekend, which, like much the president does, amounted to a publicity stunt masquerading as policy.
In place of the $600 weekly supplement that expired last month and left tens of millions of jobless Americans in the lurch, the president proposed to reduce the payments by a third, to $400, and require the states to bear a quarter of the burden. By Wednesday, White House officials were suggesting the states wouldn’t be required to contribute but that the payments would drop to half the expired supplement, $300 a week.
Governors’ nearly unanimous hesitation to assume a portion of the burden was foreseeable given that they, unlike the federal government, have to balance their budgets. Worse, the White House’s abdication of responsibility for the pandemic has forced states to shoulder extraordinary costs even as the downturn decimates their revenues. Regardless of whether Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell want to do their jobs, the federal government has an unmatched capacity to get Americans through this crisis.
The president’s move to repurpose disaster relief funds for unemployment, moreover, will at best complicate and lengthen the process of distributing the money to people who need it now. It’s also his latest attack on the constitutional separation of powers: Even if it makes sense to spend money Congress allocated to fire and flood relief on unemployment insurance, doing so is clearly a job for lawmakers given their authority over federal spending.
So, too, is cutting taxes. Trump’s orders at least recognized that limitation on his power, calling for a payroll tax cut but settling for a directive to suspend collection of the revenue from employees making less than $104,000 through the end of the year. To the extent that deferring the tax that funds Social Security and Medicare helps anyone, it will be those fortunate enough to have jobs and therefore not in the greatest need.
Another of the Trump orders offers modest relief to those carrying federal student loan debt by canceling interest due for the rest of the year and allowing principal payments to be delayed. But the president stopped short of extending such relief to tens of millions of tenants who could lose their housing, ordering only that administration officials look into the matter. Congress’ moratorium on evictions by landlords with federally backed mortgages expired last month, and the California courts’ suspension of eviction proceedings could end as soon as this week.
Trump’s executive orders are a flimsy bandage indeed for an economy that has hemorrhaged jobs and growth with no end to the underlying contagion in sight. Their chief value is to underscore the need for the administration to reach an accord with Congress on a relief package equal to the crisis at hand.