Brooks: Congress ‘Took the Wrong Strategy’ with Coronavirus Relief Bill

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that Congress took the “wrong strategy” with its coronavirus relief bill, and that they should have focused on keeping people employed like some other countries have rather than focusing on unemployment insurance.

Brooks applauded Congress for passing a bill, but added, “I think they took the wrong strategy. The United Kingdom and Denmark and some other countries decided what’s most important is to keep people employed. And so, they gave money to employers to keep people on the payroll, and that does a lot of things. It keeps the firms intact. It keeps people feeling like, I have a job, even if they have to stay home. We went the unemployment insurance route, which was to get people out of their workplace, then we’ll subsidize them. The problem is, once you’re off — out of the labor market, for some people, it’s hard to get back in. And I worry about the organizations, the institutions of these small businesses. If suddenly they sort of go away for a time, how many of them are going to come back? How many of the nonprofits are going to come back?”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett