The U.S. Department of Labor had some good news this month when it reported 379,000 new jobs in February, a sign that the economy could be coming back from the COVID-19 recession.
But hidden in that good news was this: The U.S. economy still has 9.5 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic hit, and it would take three years of robust growth just to get us back to where we were at the start of 2020.
The job report proves that even though coronavirus might be on the way out, millions of Americans are still hurting, and they will be for a while. That’s why we support the Biden administration’s COVID relief bill, the Rescue Plan Act, which passed the Senate over the weekend and is headed to the House for a final vote this week.
The bill would get “shots in arms, money in pockets and people in jobs,” 1st District Rep. Chellie Pingree said Friday. “This package is about long-term economic recovery. Every day matters.”
The $1.9 trillion price tag makes the bill an easy target for critics, who say that any bill that spends so much has got to be wasteful. But as the jobs report shows, the damage caused by the pandemic is deep and it’s not going to go away on its own. It would be much more wasteful to let low-income and middle-class families continue to lose ground while they wait for years hoping that a recovery will reach them.
The legislation would stimulate economic growth by helping these families.
The most discussed way will be to send $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of taxpayers that will help them cover their expenses and generate economic activity in their communities. But that’s not all.
It also extends the child tax credit, which would be returned to parents in monthly payments of $300 or $350 per child (depending on their ages) starting in July. Combined with an expanded earned income tax credit, a program that supplements the pay of low-income workers, the enhanced child credit will help exactly the people who the pandemic hurt the worst and speed up the pace of the recovery.
The federal government would also help schools overcome the pandemic, not only by making improvements to their buildings so they can open safely, but also by helping to make sure that they can afford to increase instruction time to make up for a lost year in some students’ education.
The act has money for computer technology for students who could not participate in distance learning and mental health counselors for students who have suffered during the 12 months in isolation, away from their school community.
And since reopening the schools is not a one-time event, the funding continues into 2023.
The bill passed the Senate without a single Republican vote after passing on a nearly party-line vote in the House. (Maine’s 2nd Rep. Jared Golden was one of only two House Democrats who voted “no.”)
But don’t let the partisan divide in Washington fool you. The bill is popular with voters across the political spectrum because it addresses many of the ways the coronavirus – along with the erratic federal response to it – has disrupted so many lives.
Passage of the Rescue Plan Act will help put this pandemic behind us. And that would be good news.
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