monday, april 6 , 2020. the washington post EZ SU A
the coronavirus pandemic
functional government websites
and u nresponsive call c enters that
have become understaffed as fed-
eral workers stay home.
Adding to the confusion were
several last-minute changes
made by federal officials to cor-
nerstones of the relief effort, in-
cluding a revision to the rules of
the small-business loan program
hours before it went live and the
late cancellation of a require-
ment that Social Security recipi-
ents first file a special tax form to
receive their relief checks.
The administration is under
immense pressure to get the
money out into the economy fast.
In the past two weeks alone,
nearly 10 million people applied
for weekly jobless claims, by far a
record. And fears about the gov-
ernment response are mounting.
ross Zhang, 32, a lighting de-
signer and technician in New
York, tried calling the state’s un-
employment line for help
50 times on friday, after dozens
of other attempts since being laid
off about three weeks ago. He did
not find help.
“It is a feeling of powerlessness
and anxiety, and anger at people
in power failing to provide an-
swers,” Zhang said. “The stress is
as much from the punishing bu-
reaucracies as from the virus.”
The ranks of the unemployed
will probably swell quickly:
About half of small businesses
face closure over the next two
months without emergency help,
according to a National federa-
tion of Independent Business
survey.
Joe Scaldara, 47, for weeks had
decided against reducing the
hours of his seven-person staff at
Auto Tune To tal Car Care because
he thought the federal loan pro-
gram would allow him to cover
his payroll. But on friday, Scal-
dara’s bank told him it would not
process his small-business appli-
cation because it is prioritizing
clients with existing loans. Scal-
dara’s calls to three other lenders
have not been returned, and he
said he expects to lay off his staff
at the end of this week.
“It’s extremely frustrating,”
Scaldara said. “I feel like I had the
wool pulled over my eyes.”
Defenders of the administra-
tion’s early efforts say the govern-
ment is facing an unprecedented
economic shock and a daunting
set of tasks. The novel coronavi-
rus pandemic has forced much of
the federal workforce to work
remotely and form its policy re-
sponse while at home. The offi-
cials reporting to the Treasury
Department are getting their
temperatures taken as they pass
through the entrance, a proce-
dure similar to what’s conducted
at the White House and executive
branch complex.
Parts of the federal relief effort
have showed signs of success.
Treasury Secretary Steven
mnuchin on friday announced
that the Small Business Adminis-
tration had already processed
more t han $1.8 billion in emergen-
cy loans for small firms, largely by
aid from a1 community banks, even though
the program is in its infancy.
Economists on the left and right
have praised the bipartisan mea-
sures to send checks and shore up
unemployment insurance.
“Secretary mnuchin takes very
seriously his responsibility of exe-
cuting the largest economic relief
package in history to help Ameri-
can workers, families and busi-
nesses,” Treasury spokeswoman
monica Crowley said in a state-
ment, citing the rapid launch of
the small-business program and
the $1,200 check payments, as
well as the hiring of outside firms
for the airline loan program. “The
Secretary and the entire [Trea-
sury] team are fully committed to
the fast and successful implemen-
tation of the Cares Act to provide
much-needed assistance to the
American people.”
mnuchin has wielded enor-
mous personal control over the
allocation of hundreds of billions
of dollars in emergency funding,
closely reviewing not only policy
decisions but also the depart-
ment’s informational pages and
news releases. Some officials at
Treasury have griped that
mnuchin’s close personal involve-
ment across numerous efforts
risks creating a “bottleneck” t hat
slows the process of disbursing
the aid, according to three people
who have spoken with govern-
ment officials in recent days.
former Treasury officials also
have faulted mnuchin for not do-
ing more to fill key positions in
Treasury’s ranks with experts.
more than a dozen s enior positions
in Treasury were unfilled heading
into the crisis, creating a vacuum
between the career staff and the
highest levels of management.
“It’s one thing to turn the water
on full blast, which is what Con-
gress did with the $2 trillion
stimulus. But the water still has
to get through the pipes. And
right now, the pipes are clogged,”
said Sarah Bloom raskin, who
served as a deputy treasury secre-
tary during the Barack obama
administration.
That shortage risks delaying a
massive effort in which speed is
critical, at all levels of the econo-
my. Some large corporations wal-
loped by the outbreak are search-
ing for answers about how they
can access more than $400 bil-
lion in emergency federal fund-
ing. mnuchin, for instance, has
said the government will proba-
bly seek equity stakes in the
airlines in exchange for the aid, a
demand that the airlines are an-
grily rejecting. Airline lobbyists
are already planning to press the
White House National Economic
Council and President Trump di-
rectly if mnuchin does not back
down, according to a person with
knowledge of the strategy, who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to freely discuss private
deliberations.
Attention last week centered
largely on the law’s SBA program,
the centerpiece of the administra-
tion’s effort to keep firms with
fewer than 500 employees from
going out of business. The loan
program is designed to get aid
quickly to millions of ailing busi-
nesses so they can retain their
employees. Some top bank execu-
tives are balking at t he terms of the
program, which they warned in its
rush to disburse funds could lead
them to be held liable under
“know your customer” provisions
of the Bank Secrecy Act. The delays
and uncertainty have left some
small businesses in the lurch.
Chris Landry, who runs a one-
person consulting firm in
Northampton, mass., said with
his two children in college he
needs to know whether he can
receive the loan, but he has not
been able to get answers from his
credit union or his bank. “It’s
extremely frustrating,” Landry
said. “The guidelines are very
confusing for people who aren’t
professional accountants.”
other parts of the government
response are being exposed as
inadequate to the challenge at
hand. Congress has given the
states an additional $1.5 billion to
update their systems to process
unemployment claims, when in
reality the states probably need
closer to an additional $30 billion
to $60 billion, although it is
unclear how much the Labor
Department will provide, accord-
ing to Indivar Dutta-Gupta, co-
executive director of the George-
town Center on Poverty and In-
equality. more than 25 states use
processing servers that date back
to the 1980s and have not been
updated in decades. multiple
state unemployment websites
have crashed amid widespread
reports that the newly laid off
cannot get questions answered.
Te ars in the federal safety net
are also surfacing as a concern.
millions more people will proba-
bly apply for federal welfare ben-
efits but be denied because the
program’s costs are capped, said
michael Linden, a fellow at the
roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning
think tank. Up to 30 million
Americans are at risk of losing
their insurance because of the
virus, with the number of people
who have no health insurance
potentially rising to 40 million,
according to a recent report by
Health management Associates,
a health-care consultancy firm.
State revenue is expected to
plummet as economic activity
grinds to a halt, depriving medic-
aid — which provides insurance
to the poor — of a key funding
source.
“It’s a perfect storm, where the
system is set up to collapse at a
moment of need,” said rebecca
Vallas, a poverty expert at the
Center for American Progress, a
left-leaning think tank.
Despite the early struggles in
launching the stimulus program,
the Trump administration has
begun deliberations on an addi-
tional giant aid package. White
House officials have in recent
days discussed pitching a payroll-
tax cut, a capital-gains tax cut,
creating 50-year Treasury bonds
to lock in low interest rates, and a
waiver that would clear business-
es of liability from employees
who contract the coronavirus on
the job, according to two peoplewith knowledge of internal White
House deliberations who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized
to comment publicly.
In public remarks, the presi-
dent also has seized on the idea of
a $2 trillion infrastructure pack-
age after conversations with
long-standing business associ-
ates in New York, an idea also
popular among congressionalDemocrats. But Trump faces in-
ternal skepticism over an infra-
structure bill from leading White
House players, with chief of staff
mark meadows and senior eco-
nomic adviser Larry Kudlow seen
as opposing the effort, according
to one of the people familiar with
internal dynamics.
It is not clear whether officials
are moving fast enough to imple-
ment the first package or toapprove a second one for the
growing crisis, some economists
say.
“The administrative side of the
government is completely over-
whelmed right now,” said Jason
furman, who served as a senior
economist during the obama ad-
ministration. “We had a creaky
infrastructure to begin with, and
it’s now at risk of breaking.”
[email protected]Confusion and questions about mechanics of stimulus plan are slowing relief
The dead in the United States
already number more than 9,500,
triple the toll of the t errorist attacks
that brought the nation low on
Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. Surgeon General
Jerome m. Adams reached back
further to find an analogue for the
sense of national alarm, as the
country surpassed 333,000 known
cases. He said the coming days
could bring catastrophe compara-
ble to the attack that drew the Unit-
ed States into World War II in 1941.
“This is going to be the hardest
and saddest week of most Ameri-
cans’ lives, quite frankly,” the sur-
geon general said in a Sunday ap-
pearance on fox News. “This is
going to be our Pearl Harbor mo-
ment, our 9/11 m oment, only it’s n ot
going to be localized. It’s g oing to be
happening a ll over t he country.”
The virus was transforming life
not just here but globally, sending
Britain’s prime minister, Boris
Johnson, to a hospital Sunday, 10
days after he learned o f his positive
test. A spokesman for the Conser-
vative Party leader said the hospi-
talization was a “precautionary
step,” as Johnson “continues to
have persistent symptoms.”
But the news jolted the United
Kingdom, which has recorded
more than 48,000 cases and nearly
5,000 deaths, as Queen Elizabeth
II, in a rare t elevised a ddress, urged
resolve.
She said the moment recalled
her first public speech in 1940, as
she addressed children evacuated
from their homes because of the
virus from a1 war.
“Today, once again, many will
feel a painful sense of separation
from t heir loved o nes,” s he said i n a
prerecorded video, produced at
Windsor Castle.
Trump c hose different words but
sounded a similar note, predicting
“a horrific point in terms of death.”
As a treatment for the novel virus,
he continued to tout hydroxychlo-
roquine, an antimalarial drug with
promising but unproven effects for
patients with covid-19, while ac-
knowledging: “What do I know?
I’m not a doctor.”
He said the federal government
had purchased and stockpiled 29
million doses of the drug, and later
blocked fauci, who heads the Na-
tional Institute of Allergy and In-
fectious Diseases, from answering
a question about the treatment
course. He also said more than
1.6 million tests had been conduct-
ed, in a country of about 330 mil-
lion, and that his administration
was gathering e quipment “from e v-
ery corner of Earth” a nd delivering
it across t he country.
But places hit hardest by the
outbreak continued to report
shortages of critical medical equip-
ment, including ventilators, mov-
ing states to undertake ad hoc ef-
forts to share the lifesaving breath-
ing devices.
Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) said
Sunday h e would return more than
400 ventilators to the national
stockpile so they could be used by
states facing more dire circum-
stances, a day after oregon pre-
pared to dispatch 140 ventilators to
New York. Louisiana Gov. John Bel
Edwards (D) said he expected the
state to exhaust its supply of the
machines a s soon as Thursday, w ith
ICU beds running out two days
later.
Still the worst area of the Ameri-
can outbreak, New York topped
4,000 deaths on Sunday.
The state’s governor, Andrew m.
Cuomo, said there were hopeful,
though inconclusive, signs. There
were fewer fatalities Saturday than
friday, he noted at a briefing in
Albany, adding, “You could argue
that you’re seeing a slight plateau-
ing in the data, which obviously
would be good n ews.”fauci said the measure he was
attuned to nationally was the in-
crease in new cases, predicting the
death toll would continue to climb
even after the country successfully
slowed the spread of the outbreak.
“This next week is going to look
bad because we’re still not yet at
that apex,” he said Sunday on CBS’s“face the Nation.”
Within about a week, fauci said,
he hoped to “see a flattening out of
the curve and coming down,” e spe-
cially in New York.
other states were confronting
projections that showed critical
caseloads arriving as little a s a week
after the s urge battering New York.
In New Jersey, which had more
than 3 7,000 cases as of Sunday, G ov.
Phil murphy (D) said he had se-
cured an additional 500 ventila-
tors. A spokesman for the governor
said t he allocation from t he nation-
al stockpile followed three phone
calls on Saturday with Pence and
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-
in-law and s enior a dviser, as well as
Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant
health secretary. The state has re-
ceived just over half of the 2,
ventilators it has requested, said
the spokesman, m ahen Gunaratna.
In addition to places such as
New Jersey and Louisiana, where
cases have already surged rapidly,
Deborah Birx, the coordinator for
the White House’s task force, said
over the weekend she was con-
cerned about emerging h ot spots in
Pennsylvania and Colorado, as well
as in Washington, D.C.
At the same time, she said, she
was anticipating a “stabilization of
cases across these large metro ar-
eas where the outbreak began sev-
eral weeks ago.”
Washington mayor muriel E.
Bowser (D) on Sunday closed the
Wharf’s fish market after custom-
ers crowded the open-air venue on
Saturday, defying the social dis-
tancing rules tightened under astay-at-home order issued late last
month. Known cases stood a t more
than 1 ,000 in the District.
Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has
reported more than 11,500 cases,
more than doubling in the four
days since Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued
a statewide stay-at-home order.
“This is really scary,” Wolf s aid in
an interview Sunday. He rejected
the analogy with warfare, saying an
enemy in battle is “something you
could actually see.” The other dif-
ference, he said, is that ordinary
people are on the front lines of the
quest to contain the virus, noting
that his wife was sewing home-
made masks. “We need to buy
time,” he said.
States across t he country are un-
der directives like Pennsylvania’s.
But eight republican governors
have yet to call for all residents to
shelter in place. Asa Hutchinson,
the governor of Arkansas, said S un-
day on NBC’s “meet the Press” t hat
his “targeted approach” was better.
Trump on Saturday said he
would not press governors to take
more sweeping measures, even as
members of his administration be-
seeched governors to clamp down.
“I just don’t understand why we’re
not doing that,” f auci s aid on CNN.
Birx said even critical activities
should be c urtailed if possible, f or a
while.
“This is the moment to not be
going to the grocery store, not go-
ing to the pharmacy, but doing ev-
erything you c an to keep your fami-
ly and your friends safe,” s he said.
The guidance required a painful
sacrifice for many Americans, e spe-cially those preparing to celebrate
religious holidays that mark the
onset of spring. Passover, which
commemorates struggles for free-
dom, b egins Wednesday night. And
Easter, which is Sunday, was the
day Trump initially said he hoped
to lift federal guidance on restric-
tions to stem the pandemic be-
cause, “That would be a beautiful
thing.”
It would have been beautiful,
said Solomon Kinloch Jr., the se-
nior pastor of Detroit’s Triumph
Church, especially in places such a s
michigan, where the virus has ex-
acted a terrible toll on vulnerable
populations.
“This process is robbing us of the
ability to have authentic relation-
ships,” he said in a n interview.
michigan did not specifically
carve out exceptions to its stay-at-
home order for religious services,
as did other states, though it did
stipulate that religious worship in
violation of the order would not
bring a penalty.
Kinloch said the congregation is
doing everything it can to keep its
members safe, hosting and s tream-
ing “drive-in services” that allow
congregants to pull up to a large
screen in the parking lot of the
church.
“They can even take Commu-
nion, if they bring their crackers
and juice from home,” he said.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Hannah Natanson and Fe licia Sonmez
contributed to this report.Americans are warned to brace for ‘Pearl Harbor moment’
“This is going to be the
hardest and saddest
week of most
Americans’ lives, quite
frankly.”
Jerome M. Adams, U.S. surgeon
general, speaking Sunday in an
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