Category: reason

Congress has not yet finished passing the latest pandemic stimulus bill, but lawmakers and the Trump administration are already looking ahead to the next spending opportunity.

And while it is too soon to know for sure what will be included in the next stimulus bill, early indications suggest it could include a lot of questionable spending that has little to do with COVID-19. Lawmakers and administration officials have floated subsidies for government-built internet service, bailouts for state and local governments, and maybe even handouts to sports leagues shuttered by the pandemic.

“Roads, bridges, broadband, especially broadband now to rural America is very important. We’ve talked about incentives for restaurants, sports, entertainment because these businesses have been impacted,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Tuesday. “And we’ve also, we’re talking about in the case of states, we’ve heard from the governors and the fiscal issues of the states.”

As Mnuchin noted, infrastructure spending figures to be the centerpiece of the so-called “phase four” stimulus—following an initial stimulus package passed in mid-March, the record-breaking $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and this week’s $484 billion package aimed at refilling a program providing loans to small businesses.

President Donald Trump has been pushing for a multibillion-dollar infrastructure program since the 2016 campaign, and the coronavirus shutdown provides the perfect opportunity. It would be a massive jobs program at a time when millions of Americans are likely to be looking for work and a bipartisan political win for Trump as he heads into reelection. He’s also calling for a “phase four” stimulus to include a payroll tax cut. It’s something Trump has wanted for a long time, but it would likely have a limited impact on the coronavirus recovery.

Democrats are blocking a 251 Billion Dollar funding boost for Small Businesses which will help them keep their employees. It should be for only that reason, with no additions. We should have a big Infrastructure Phase Four with Payroll Tax Cuts & more. Big Economic Bounceback!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 10, 2020

A limited infrastructure bill is the most defensible part of the plan Mnuchin outlined on Tuesday—though it would be more defensible if the country wasn’t $23 trillion in debt and facing the prospect of a $4 trillion budget gap this year. Even so, it’s probably a bad idea says Chris Edwards, director of budget policy for the Cato Institute.

“A federal infrastructure package would probably cater to lobbyist demands, not market demands,” says Edwards. “It would likely include billions of dollars for transit, even though the ridership outlook is grim.”

And, again, that’s the most defensible part of this plan.

A bailout for state and local governments is likely in the offing too—already, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R–La.) and Bob Menendez (D–N.J.) have unveiled a proposal to spend $500 billion helping state and local governments avoid a coronavirus-induced budget crunch, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) wants to spend $4 billion to help states get vote-by-mail infrastructure in place before November’s elections.

But elections are run by the states, and that means states should be responsible for figuring out how to conduct and pay for them. While state and local governments are more limited in their ability to borrow in response to a crisis than the federal government is, they are not helpless. At a time when the federal government is putting trillions of dollars on the national credit card to help businesses and workers survive this crisis, state and local governments should be expected to shoulder their own burdens.

Rural broadband should be an even lower priority. The Obama administration set aside $7.2 billion for the development of rural broadband in the 2009 stimulus bill, but the money was not spent wisely. One study of three parts of the country that received rural broadband grants—far-flung regions of Montana, Kansas, and Minnesota—found that the government spent about $350,000 per household connected to high-speed internet. The median home price in those areas? Between $94,000 and $189,000.

In the years since the Obama stimulus, the market has done a far better job of getting rural Americans online. And with the expansion of high-speed mobile internet service, there is even less of a reason for the federal government to blow billions of dollars on laying fiber optic cables to the boondocks.

The same can be said of the idea to bail out sports teams and leagues, or for “entertainment” businesses in general, as Mnuchin floated on Tuesday. While professional sports are suffering from the coronavirus shutdown—leaving players, staff, and stadium workers out of jobs for an unknown period of time—public efforts should be focused on softening the blow for workers, not helping their employers avoid restructuring. Indeed, bailing out professional sports would be no better than Trump’s ill-advised (and thankfully scrapped) plan to bail out the cruise industry. And where do you draw the line? Should movie theaters get federal cash to stay open? Should casinos? Bankruptcy is ugly, but it’s better than a government bailout that isn’t even guaranteed to keep them out of bankruptcy.

Governing requires setting priorities, and that’s never more important than during a crisis. Members of Congress have a political incentive to spend and spend and spend, but there simply isn’t enough money to go around—in fact, we passed that point a long time ago.

“I do believe it makes sense for the government to provide support to businesses and families that can’t make it through this,” Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who voted against this week’s coronavirus bill, said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “I don’t want to see this massive accumulation of debt destroy this great country.”

Lawmakers would do well to keep one eye on the mounting debt as they consider their next steps. Thankfully, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) seems to be considering that trade-off.

“We can’t spend enough money to solve the problem,” he said Tuesday. “Let’s weigh this very carefully because the future of our country in terms of the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern,” he added.

It’s obvious that there will be more government spending in response to the coronavirus, but separating out the essential from the nice-to-have is more important now than ever.

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A judge in Illinois yesterday paved the way for the Libertarian Party (L.P.) to actually get on the ballot in her state after COVID-19 made traditional petitioning to gather signatures for ballot access impossible.

Richard Winger reports in the indispensable Ballot Access News that Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, in an as-yet-unwritten opinion in the case of Libertarian Party of Illinois v. Pritzker, decided that if a third party was on the ballot in 2016 or 2018 for an office, it can be on the ballot again this year with no petition signatures required. For the L.P., this includes the presidential and Senate ballot slots.

For other legislative seats, candidates will only need to collect 10 percent of the normal requirement this year (which will mean 2,500 required instead of 25,000). The previous deadline for the petitions of June 22 has also been pushed back to August 7. The petitions can also be collected via e-signed electronic documents (although “the candidate or party must then print out the results and transport a piece of paper to election officials.”)

The Illinois Herald & Review reports that Illinois asked Pallmeyer to approve a proposal that would have required voters “to print out ballot petitions, sign them with a pen and return them to candidates either physically or electronically. The deadline would have remained June 22 and the number of required signatures would have been halved.”

L.P. national chair Nicholas Sarwark says no longer needing to collect a huge number of Illinois signatures is a “big story” for the L.P. Actually meeting the original Illinois requirements with COVID-19 would have been an “impossible dream,” but with this legal win behind them, he’s confident similar arguments, either made inside or outside formal lawsuits, can be expected to win over other judges or state officials.

Winger notes that although Illinois insisted that an August 7 deadline was far too late, “The minor party petition in Illinois was due in early August in all the years 1931 through 1999.  Before 1931, it was in September, and it was in October from 1891 through 1929.”

The L.P. is facing COVID-19-related ballot access problems in many states, with traditional petitioning methods essentially illegal or impossibly difficult. (Ballotpedia is keeping a running tally of every election law or requirement change that COVID-19 is inspiring.)

The L.P. as of today is on 36 ballots (plus the District of Columbia), and involved in active lawsuits against Maine, Georgia, Maryland, and Connecticut over ballot access issues (though not all of them are strictly about COVID-19-related problems).

The L.P. would prefer to get concessions on impossible signature rules via negotiation, not lawsuits, and its members are in discussions with many states about these issues. However, L.P. Executive Director Daniel Fishman says some states, such as Alabama, have so far ignored their communications.

Still, Fishman says L.P members tend to get generous with donations when ballot access issues are in question. He expects the party will have the resources it needs to fight it out with various states in court if it comes to that, and “we fully intend to pursue legal action everywhere we have to.”

If circumstances push the party’s selection of its presidential ticket past the currently scheduled late May convention in Austin, Texas, which may have to be canceled or postponed, it could harm the L.P. in certain states, such as New Hampshire, that require the specific presidential candidate to be named on petitions. A decision on holding, postponing, or otherwise rethinking the convention and nomination process is likely to be made on May 2, and Fishman regrets the potential loss of a national C-SPAN audience if an in-person convention is ruined by COVID-19.

Many in the L.P. are eagerly awaiting a possible decision from Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.), who has been hinting at a potential run. Fishman is not afraid that falling short of 50-state ballot access will discourage professional officeholders like Amash from thinking of the L.P. as a potential home for a presidential run.

“I don’t think any [such candidate] is going to try to run with the L.P. just because we have 50-state ballot access,” Fishman says, though he grants that “is a perk.” Rather, he says that “people run with us because we are expressing a philosophy that is neither Right nor Left that appeals to principled politicians who otherwise have no home.” The recent history of both major parties have shown them to be shifting masses of personality cults (such as the one dedicated to Trump) and opportunists who respond to shifting winds (such as the Democrats’ slow turnaround on gay marriage and marijuana legalization, which the Libertarians have long been for).

Regardless of whether Amash goes Libertarian this year, Fishman thinks it would be great to have a sitting elected congressperson stressing the iniquities of ballot access law, an issue Amash even as a Republican was dedicated to reforming.

Still, the L.P. does intend to fight it out, COVID or no COVID, to once again reach that 50-state prize. A typical letter requesting a secretary of state be reasonable, from Georgia L.P. Chair Ryan Graham, argued that “In light of [COVID-19], we would ask that the Secretary of State understand the effect this crisis and the states of emergency has had on people’s willingness to be approached by a stranger, let alone take a pen or a clipboard. Additionally, though all of our petitioners are healthy and would stop petitioning at the first sign of illness, Corona is often spread by people who are asymptomatic…[this] seriously threatens our ability to get on the ballot….In light of the states of emergency and in the interest of public health, we would ask that the petition requirement for all political body and independent candidates be waived for the 2020 General Election.”

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Is the New York City subway system responsible for seeding the nation’s worst COVID-19 outbreak? Or are the Big Apple’s motorists to blame? The answer has major implications for our immediate response to the COVID-19 crisis, and the role cities will play in a post-pandemic America.

The debate started last week when Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jeffery Harris published a controversial working paper claiming that the nation’s largest rail transit network was the major vector for spreading novel coronavirus in New York City, where it has killed over 10,000 people.

“New York City’s multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator—if not the principal transmission vehicle –of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic,” wrote Harris in his paper, which was originally published on April 13.

Harris, in his initial paper, cites two pieces of evidence to make his point. The first is a correlation between a fall in subway ridership and the falling rate of new, reported COVID-19 cases. The number of daily turnstile entries fell from nearly 6 million to just over 500,000 by late March, his paper shows, which corresponded with a dropoff in new infections. New cases of the virus, Harris notes, fell most in areas of the city that saw the biggest decline in transit ridership.

“The near shutoff of subway ridership in Manhattan—down by over 90 percent at the end of March—correlates strongly with the substantial increase in the doubling time of new cases in this borough,” writes Harris. Boroughs with a less dramatic fall in ridership saw shorter doubling times for new cases. (“Doubling time” is the period of time required for an observed phenomenon to double in number; in the case of a pandemic, the longer the doubling time, the better.)

Harris’ first draft also includes a map of new COVID-19 cases broken down by ZIP code, which he suggests shows that one subway line stretching from Queens to Manhattan correlated with disease hotspots in the city.

In his original draft, Harris caveats all of this by saying correlation does not equal causation. But on April 19, he released an updated paper which pointed to the high death rate among the city’s transit workers—79 of whom have reportedly died of COVID-19—as the smoking gun proving his case.

“How ironic it is that [the] unfathomable tragedy of these frontline workers turns out to be the clincher that transports us from correlation to causation,” he said.

This paper and its conclusions have fueled calls by some officials to shut down New York’s mass transit system, which carries nearly half of the country’s transit riders, to help stem the spread of the virus. On Saturday, the New York Post reported that three New York City councilmembers sent a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) urging him to temporarily close the subway and suspend bus service.

“We believe that the New York City transit system is a primary contributor to the spread of COVID-19, and we recommend a temporary closure of the system for at least one week for deep cleaning of trains, buses, and stations,” these councilmembers wrote. They, like Harris, suggested that the city subsidize rideshare or cab rides for essential workers. So far, Cuomo has resisted these calls.

At the same time, a number of voices are pushing back on Harris’ conclusions, and even suggesting the counterintuitive idea that motorists, not transit riders, are the ones most responsible for spreading COVID-19 throughout the city.

In an article over at Market Urbanism, Salim Furth, a researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, pokes holes in Harris’s case. While cratering subway ridership is correlated with a slowing rate of infection, says Furth, so are a lot of other activities.

“People take the subway, not for the heck of it, but to get places. When those destinations are places they no longer want to go or are no longer allowed to go” they ride less, Furth tells Reason. Thus, it becomes difficult to disentangle the effects of falling subway ridership from all the other social distancing measures that were happening simultaneously. Falling restaurant visits and declining use of bike-share also correlate with a declining infection rate, he says. But that correlation doesn’t tell us anything specific about the role restaurants and bike-sharing played in spreading COVID-19 around New York.

While boroughs that saw a smaller percentage decline in transit ridership also saw a smaller decline in the rate of new cases, Furth says these same boroughs had lower numbers of transit riders to begin with.

“If subways (or ferries) are the primary vector, why is Staten Island, with a 67 percent automobile commute share, just as susceptible to COVID-19 case growth as the rest of the city?” Furth writes. “The change in transit usage is plausibly consistent with Harris’ hypothesis; the level of transit usage is inconsistent with it.”

The fact that transit workers have a higher death rate than transit riders could point to some sort of institutional spread within New York’s transit agency, Furth argues. It is not proof that subway cars themselves are the primary disease vector.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs bus and train service in New York City, also prevented its employees from wearing masks throughout early March.

In his response to Harris, Furth compares U.S. Census Bureau data on the share of people commuting via car to the number of new COVID-19 cases broken down by ZIP code. He found that rates of car travel are highly correlated with the number of new infections. Outer boroughs, where rates of car commuting are highest, are also showing the highest rates of COVID-19 infections.

Furth offers two theories for why motorists, not transit riders, might have been more likely to spread coronavirus. “Cars may give you a false sense of security,” he says, suggesting drivers could have reduced their travel around town less than transit riders. “Somebody who only has the subway to get around may be only relying on delivery, only going to the corner store, not leaving their block for commerce,” Furth says.

In addition, he says transit riders could be interacting with a more tightly-knit network of people; others who take the same subway line or frequent businesses near the same transit stops, for instance. That would reduce the number of new people they run the risk of infecting. Auto travelers, by comparison, could have a more random network of interpersonal interactions, helping them to spread infections farther and faster.

This is not just an academic debate. In the short term, knowing which mode of transportation is more likely to contribute to the spread of COVID-19 would help guide immediate policies for combating the virus.

If Harris is correct, then it would make more sense to shut down transit for deep cleaning or subsidize Lyft and Uber rides. But if cars are helping transport the virus, then raising bridge tolls or closing some bridges and highways in New York altogether might be the smarter move.

Getting this response wrong would mean actively encouraging the most dangerous modes of travel. Urbanites are also debating the longer-term impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on denser cities. Reason just published a video exploring this very topic.

Finding solid answers to these questions will determine how tens of millions of Americans get around each day, where they live, what kinds of developments their governments encourage and restrict, and how their tax dollars are spent.

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In response to the pandemic and by no choice of their own, many families across the U.S. are experimenting with alternative forms of education. It’s fair to say that not all of them find homeschooling or online learning to be to their taste. Having the kids go through their lessons at the kitchen table doesn’t suit everybody’s schedules or personal needs. But for others, the forced experiment with different approaches to teaching their kids leaves a desire for more. That has some government-school defenders sufficiently worried that they’re trying to sabotage the competition.

That an unplanned venture into learning at home isn’t for everybody is apparent from reports of families giving up. “Some frustrated and exhausted parents are choosing to disconnect entirely for the rest of the academic year,” Time magazine reports. “Others are cramming all their children’s school work into the weekend or taking days off work to help their kids with a week’s worth of assignments in one day.”

The problem is that being thrown into a situation that’s not of your choice is a lot different than entering it willingly and after research and preparation. A few schools came out of the gate ready to hold classes through Zoom, to share documents electronically, and to hold quizzes online. All too many, though, belatedly copied off thick packets, dropped them in the mail, and wished students “good luck.”

With nothing else to go by, a lot of parents tried to replicate the schoolroom experience at home. That’s an exhausting approach that’s unnecessary when you realize how little time is used for actual learning in a typical classroom.

To put it into context, the Remote Learning Recommendations guide from the Illinois State Board of Education suggests a maximum of an hour per day of remote learning for pre-K students, two hours per day for those in grades 3-5, and 270 minutes per day for high schoolers. Those time recommendations are supposed to include “digital interaction and assigned work.”

That’s not just an emergency accommodation, either. While definitions of “wasted time” vary, TNTP, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of teaching, found in a recent survey of high schools that “an average student spent almost three-quarters of their time on assignments that were not grade-appropriate.” Learning at home can eliminate a lot of the slack in the schedule.

That reflects my son’s experience with his private high school. Already technically savvy, the school made a nearly seamless transition to online learning that has almost eliminated homework. Remote learning has proven to be more efficient, by and large, than the brick-and-mortar version. When asked, a significant number of my son’s classmates say they prefer learning this way—though many miss the in-person social interaction.

We were lucky that our son’s school moved to remote learning so easily, but we would have been fine anyway. We homeschooled for five years and could have gone back to that approach without a problem. (If you’re looking for homeschooling resources you can use on your own, I’ve prepared a list here.) But even many families who had homeschooling and remote learning thrust on them are gaining a taste for the approach.

“The coronavirus pandemic is giving every family with kids a look into the world of homeschooling and some parents are even beginning to enjoy it,” WIFR in Illinois noted after speaking with local families.

“While many parents are enjoying their kids being home during this time, some parents have found that they actually enjoy homeschooling their kids more,” agrees a piece in Missouri State University’s The Standard after a similar review of family experiences.

“Homeschooling during the coronavirus pandemic could change education forever,” the World Economic Forum bluntly says, drawing on data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that take into account both people’s current experiences around the world in coping with the pandemic as well as the recent evolution of technical tools that ease learning.

And that’s exactly what some defenders of the status quo fear.

“Experts warn that any growing popularity of homeschooling as a result of the pandemic will likely worsen education for students and pose serious problems to the economy and the nation’s social well-being,” hisses Jeff Bryant of Our Schools, a project that opposes alternatives to government schools. He warns that some homeschoolers don’t share his progressive politics, homeschooling may not work for all families, and parents could choose to educate their children rather than earn a second income.

Elizabeth Bartholet, of Harvard Law School, also senses danger in parents who may not share her political and religious views overseeing the education of their own children. She “sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice,” notes an article in Harvard Magazine.

But attempts to outlaw home-based education and to vilify its practitioners can be dealt with later. Of more immediate concern is that, even as schools closed as part of efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, some of the same officials sending kids home also did their best to limit access to education options.

Oregon not only closed brick-and-mortar schools to head off the pandemic—it limited online public schools to existing students.

“Virtual public charter schools as well as other online schools were also impacted by the Governor’s order stating schools may not enroll new students or withdraw existing students during the period of the school closures,” reported the Coos Bay World.

The ban on new enrollments was imposed to avoid “creating further school funding disruptions that would be created by the transfer of students from one school to another,” an Oregon Department of Education spokesman told The 74, which covers education news.

Pennsylvania didn’t technically stop virtual charters from enrolling new students, but legislators passed a bill that “forbids all public charter schools that are closed from counting new students on their official enrollment numbers starting on March 13, the day of the governor’s announcement to close all schools.” That means cyber charters won’t be compensated for new students.

“Brick-and-mortar school advocates say students jumping ship for cyber charters could further financially destabilize traditional school districts at an already vulnerable time,” PennLive noted.

In both Oregon and Pennsylvania, educating kids was a purely secondary concern for officials who thought it more important to maintain funding for institutions that were closed and risked losing students to competitors that were prepared to continue operating. They didn’t even try to hide their priorities.

At the end of the day, parents see how their children rate in terms of importance in the eyes of education officials. And now they have a taste of something else. They know that there are different—and, perhaps, better—ways to educate their children. Not all families will opt out of traditional education approaches; some can’t wait to get back to life as they remember it.

But just as education officials fear, many more families than in the past now know that kids can be taught in more than one way. More than a few will refuse to go back to business as usual.

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How do we reopen American society in a way that keeps people safe but also puts them back to work and school?

One of the most realistic and workable plans comes from a team of policy analysts led by Avik Roy, the president of the Austin, Texas-based Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity. Even without widespread testing, a vaccine, or a cure, they argue that we should reopen schools and allow healthy, younger employees to go back to work because COVID-19 kills mostly older people who can be protected without shutting everything down.

Roy tells Nick Gillespie that the “massive expansion of government creates a further drag on the economy” that is mostly invisible to D.C. bureaucrats and commentators. “The more we lock down the economy, the more we harm those individuals who are most vulnerable, who don’t have the cash cushions or the white-collar jobs that allow them to keep going,” he says, even as he remains hopeful that many regulations that have been suspended during the pandemic will never return.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Photo credit: Bastiaan Slabbers/ZUMA/Newscom

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