The Hawkins/Walker COVID Relief Plan
Since March we have we put forward an urgent agenda to address COVID-19 and the economic collapse. The health and economic crises have only deepened since.
The Capitalist Parties are Presiding Over a Failed State
With 4% of the world’s population, the US has 25% of the world’s COVID deaths, with public health experts predicting as many as 800,000 deaths by the end of the year.
The economy is now in a depression, with over 35 million unemployed, over 32 million receiving unemployment benefits, though the unemployment expansion has been allowed to lapse, and six million dropping out of the labor force entirely since February. An estimated 27 million people have lost their employer-linked health insurance.
The housing crisis is becoming more acute. Even before the economic collapse, US cities suffered from chronic homelessness for hundreds of thousands of people. And now with the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium the crisis threatens to deepen further. The Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey found 30 percent of renters had little or no confidence that they could meet housing payments in August. Up to 43% of renters, 40 million people, are at risk of eviction.
With tax revenues collapsing, the failure to provide federal funding to state and city governments risks the jobs of 22 million public sector workers. States and cities needed nearly $1 trillion in federal aid by this summer to keep operating without big layoffs of public workers.
The last six months of the pandemic and economic collapse show that the two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. Most other organized societies have test, contract trace, and quarantine programs that have suppressed community spread of the virus and enabled a safe reopening of businesses and schools. The two major parties in the US have continued their dogmatic faith that private enterprise alone can deliver health care and economic recovery. It has been a dismal failure.
The failed bi-partisan state is unable to pass legislation in time to prevent foreclosures and in time for the shrinkage in unemployment benefit. These will be devastating to an economy that shrank at a record 32.9% annual pace in the second quarter, the largest since records have been kept since 1947. The GDP had never shrunk by more than 10% on an annualized basis in any quarter since the government began keeping track shortly after World War Two. Jobless claims increased for the second week in a row with 1.4 million new people seeing unemployment benefits with continuing claims rising to 17.06 million and more than 35 million losing their jobs since March. In the face of these depression-era numbers, neither the Democrats or Republicans are planning enough spending to rebuild the economy.
Trump gave up. Covid won. But where is Biden? He lives within commuting distance of the White House press corps. He can command their attention as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Why isn’t he holding press conferences to pound away on the need for a test, trace, and quarantine program to suppress the virus and safely reopen the economy? He has only done one press conference with questions and answers since he became the presumptive nominee four months ago.
PLAN OVERVIEW
- Medicare to Pay for COVID-19 Testing and Treatment and All Emergency Health Care
- Defense Production Act to Meet Pandemic Relief Needs
- An OSHA Temporary Standard to Provide Enforceable PPE Protection for Workers
- $2,000 a Month per Individual (Including Children) Making Less Than $120,000 a Year
- Loans to All Businesses and Hospitals for Payroll and Fixed Overhead, To Be Forgiven If All Workers Are Kept on Payroll
- Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures, and Utility Shutoffs
- Cancel Rent, Mortgage, and Utility Payments
- Continue the expanded unemployment benefits that provide $600 to the amount received when people receive benefits.
- Suspend Student Loan Payments with 0% Interest Accumulation
- Federal Universal Rent Control
- Aid to State and Local Governments Sufficient to Keep Essential Services Running
- Emergency Funding to Cover US Postal Service Revenue Shortfalls Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Universal Mail-in Ballot Option for the 2020 General Election
We Need a Relief Plan that Puts People First!
Big businesses are getting bailed out. Much of the money designated for small businesses has been snatched up by big businesses before small business’s applications were even considered. The half a trillion allocated for big businesses is being doled out to Trump cronies without disclosure of the recipients and without restrictions against firing workers or bonuses for executives. The Federal Reserve has cut its overnight borrowing interest rate for banks to zero and is engaged in unlimited trillions of dollars of quantitative easing to backstop corporate debt.
The Payroll Protection Program (PPP) was supposed to keep small businesses going, but like the unemployment insurance program, the loans are not getting to most people and the money allocated is far from enough to meet the need. 60% of small businesses have applied, but only 5% small businesses have received PPP funding.
The last COVID-19 bailout, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), turned into a feast of corruption by members of the Trump administration, Congress, and their families, donors, and political cronies. The disgrace was made worse because one-third of the people could not make their rent payments. 14 million children went hungry in June, three times the number of children who went hungry during the Great Recession, according to an analysis of Census data. The US government is infested with corporate crooks and flunkies. The next COVID-19 relief package must put in place protections against the theft of government funds by politicians, government insiders, and their confidants
Meanwhile, essential workers—in hospitals, grocery stores, public transit, sanitation, food processing, package handling, delivery—are working in most cases without adequate or any PPE. We have already. We must demand an OSHA Temporary Standard to provide enforceable PPE protection for workers.
Direct federal payments to individuals and small businesses are urgently needed if the US is to prevent long-term job loss by the destruction of Main Street small businesses, which accounted for nearly half of all jobs going into the COVID-19 economic lockdown.
The US needs to immediately hire several hundred thousand people to test and contact trace those infected or exposed to COVID-19. This program is essential to re-opening the economy and schools safely. It is unpardonable that the leadership of both governing parties have failed for six months into the pandemic to implement this basic public health measure to suppress the virus.
Hawkins/Walker COVID Relief Plan
- Medicare to Pay for COVID-19 Testing and Treatment and All Emergency Health Care
- Defense Production Act to Rapidly Plan the Production and Distribution of Medical Supplies and a Universal Test, Contact Trace, and Quarantine Program to Suppress the Virus so the Economy and Schools Can Be Safely Reopened
- An OSHA Temporary Standard to Provide Enforceable PPE Protection for Workers
- $2,000 a Month per Individual (Including Children) Making Less Than $120,000 a Year
- Loans to All Businesses and Hospitals for Payroll and Fixed Overhead, To Be Forgiven If All Workers Are Kept on Payroll
- Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures, and Utility Shutoffs
- Cancel Rent, Mortgage, and Utility Payments; Federal Government Pays Those Bills; High-income People Pay Taxes on this Relief
- Continue the expanded unemployment benefits that provide $600 to the amount received when people receive benefits.
- Suspend Student Loan Payments with 0% Interest Accumulation
- Federal Universal Rent Control
- Aid to State and Local Governments Sufficient to Keep Essential Services Running
- Emergency Funding to Cover US Postal Service Revenue Shortfalls Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Universal Mail-in Ballot Option for the 2020 General Election
Ecosocialist Green New Deal
GREEN ECONOMY RECONSTRUCTION PROGRAM
The Green Economy Reconstruction Program will not only build a 100% clean energy system by 2030, but will reconstruct all economic sectors for ecological sustainability, from agriculture and manufacturing to housing and transportation.
Interstate Renewable Electricity System
Interstate High-Speed Rail System
Green Buildings
Interstate High-Speed Internet System
Infrastructure Reconstruction
Green Manufacturing
Agriculture and Rural Reconstruction
Civilian Conservation Corps
Zero-Waste Recycling
Peace Conversion
Just Transition Fund
Global Green New Deal
Economic Bill of Rights
The Economic Bill of Rights will end poverty and economic despair.
A Living-Wage Job
An Income Above Poverty
Affordable Housing
Comprehensive Health Care
Lifelong Free Public Education
A Secure Retirement
The Ecosocialist Green New Deal As A COVID Recovery Program
A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that over the last 600 years, the economic depression after pandemics persists for about 40 years, in contrast to much faster recoveries after wars. The difference is that capital is destroyed in wars that has to be rebuilt, but not in pandemics. Coming out of this pandemic, we should destroy the productive capital stock that has been heating up the planet and poisoning the environment and replace it with clean energy, zero waste production systems.
To rebuild our economy when it is safe to go back to work, we should invest public money on the scale needed to put everyone to back to doing what we should have been doing before the coronavirus crisis hit in order to protect our climate and our people.
The COVID-19 health and economic crises are devastating. But they also present us with the opportunity to institute economic justice, public health, and climate protection measures that will build a sustainable prosperity for our future.
The Green Party’s full-strength Green New Deal is needed now as much for economic recovery as for stopping the climate meltdown.
We have called for the Green New Deal to be the engine of the recovery. The 10-Year, $42 Trillion budget for an Ecosocialist Green New Deal would create 38 million new jobs by rebuilding all our production systems for zero-to-negative greenhouse gas emissions, zero-waste recycling, and 100% clean renewable energy by 2030 in order to reverse the climate crisis and other environmental problems. It will employ public enterprise and planning, particularly in the energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, in order to make the clean energy transformation in a decade. The Economic Bill of Rights in the program will end poverty and economic insecurity through a job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty, Medicare for All, and doubling of Social Security benefits to provide a secure retirement for all seniors.
Now is the time for the Green Party to step into the political vacuum left by the two governing parties who are blundering so blindly at this time of crisis.
We cannot afford Trump’s ineptitude and corruption.
We cannot afford Biden’s fossil-fueled neoliberal economics and neoconservative imperialism.
Now is the time for the Green Party to mount a strong nationwide campaign to point the way toward the real solutions we need, from the Green New Deal to Medicare for All.
We are running out of time on the life-or-death issues of climate, inequality, nuclear arms, and now the Covid-19 pandemic.
Real solutions can’t wait! Let’s fight for our future!
Hawkins/Walker Policy Papers and Statements on the COVID Pandemic
Our campaign has been vocal in calling for action to support the working class during this pandemic. From the beginning to now, we have called for public programs to combat the spread of the virus and ensure a safety net for working people. Below you will find our blog posts and press releases on the COVID-19 public health crisis and the incompetent response of both ruling parties.
