The pandemic has ripped a hole through every state budget in the country to the tune collectively of over $550 billion. That red ink is more than half a trillion dollars in money states won’t have—which translates into millions of people losing their jobs, services being decimated that we all rely on, attacks against people of color who are employed disproportionately in decent-paying government jobs and an economy that won’t recover if aid is not dispatched. Pronto.
And it doesn’t have to be this way, if ideology wasn’t more important for Republicans, and some Democrats, who should be pouring money into states and closing these big deficits—deficits that, remember, were no fault of management by state leaders. The deficits were caused, essentially, by one person, Donald Trump, who dismissed the pandemic, called it a hoax, made fun of people who tried to sound the alarm about the approaching calamity and, thus, caused the economic crisis that is burying states in mountains of red ink. I talk with about the state budget emergency with Michael Leachman, Vice President for State Fiscal Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
It’s not a wild guess to say that a very high percentage of the thousands of people who tune into the show are political junkies and probably a big piece of that number consider themselves progressives. So, with the Democratic convention coming up, you’d think I’d do a lot on that, right? Nope: because conventions don’t matter. And, even more so, party platforms don’t matter. And I say all that as a bona fide elected delegate for Bernie Sanders for whom I’ve already cast my virtual ballot for his nomination. My musings about the convention and the progressive movement kick off the show.
This blog originally appeared at Working Life on August 5, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Jonathan Tasini is a political / organizing / economic strategist. President of the Economic Future Group, a consultancy that has worked in a couple of dozen countries on five continents over the past 20 years
