Pollak: 5 Ways Democrats Are Making Job Losses Worse

Nearly everything Democrats have done at the national level has made the job losses from coronavirus worse.

You would not know that from the mainstream media, which have under-reported Democrats’ malfeasance and have failed to report President Donald Trump’s successes, which are gaining attention abroad.

Indeed, the media are often complicit in helping Democrats block good ideas, and introduce destructive ones. Here are 5 examples:

1. Delay. Democrats have delayed every single coronavirus relief bill. In March, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stopped a bipartisan CARES Act from going forward, then introduced her own version of the legislation with pork for left-wing interests and purely partisan provisions like voting by mail. In April, Pelosi delayed the extension of the Payment Protection Program (PPP) by 16 days. The media let her get away with it, both times.

2. Using state unemployment systems rather than direct payments. When the administration proposed sending money directly to Americans, Democrats insisted on using the state unemployment systems. The CARES Act ultimately included both kinds of payments. But as Trump later observed, some states struggled to handle the unemployment caseload, resulting in delays in payments many who had just lost their jobs.

3. Making unemployment more lucrative than work. Democrats tacked on $600 per week in additional unemployment benefits under the CARES Act. A few Republicans protested: that would make layoffs more attractive, and hiring more difficult, for employers. They were attacked in the media. But that they were right. “Workers on unemployment benefits are reluctant to give them up,” the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

4. Shaming public companies who apply for PPP funds. Nearly 40% of the money under the second tranche of the PPP has been unclaimed because Democrats and the media protested against public companies being able to apply. (Joe Biden built on that criticism Friday, accusing Trump of helping “big corporations.”) But those companies employ a lot of people. (Or, at least, they used to do so.) Under pressure, Treasury changed the rules.

5. Proposing more relief until the crisis “ends.” Democrats are now proposing that higher unemployment benefits continue until the unemployment rate falls to a certain level, or giving families monthly checks of $2,000 or more until the pandemic is over. In addition to expanding the national debt, doing so will maintain unemployment at a higher level (see #3 above), and will discourage the entrepreneurship that creates jobs.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.