Pub. 17 2020 Issue 2

12 O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S — H E L P I N G N E W M E X I C O R E A L I Z E D R E A M S W e are several months into the COVID-19 pandemic and a sobering realization must be grappled with. The United States has spent the past four-plus months attempting to deal with the pandemic and, in several key areas, has struggled, largely due to one of the most spec- tacular failures of the federal government in American history. To put it simply, we have been spending the last few months running around in circles to a degree, completely unable to recognize the proper solutions to this pandemic due to the woefully inadequate leadership at many levels of government. The statistics lay it out plainly. The United States has over twice as many deaths and nearly twice as many COVID-19 cases as the next closest country, Brazil. And Brazil’s pres- ident, Jair Bolsonaro, has essentially chosen to act as if the virus doesn’t exist. The failure in the U.S., both from an economic and health standpoint, has been so catastrophic that it could reverberate for decades. After spending nearly two months with states in lockdown and individuals in quaran- tine, without any federally mandated safety protocols, it seems as if President Donald Trump and his administration essen- tially threw up their hands in early May and decided to reopen the economy. The problem was that the reopening of the economy was essentially a charade, an attempt to show things going back to normal from a pure optics standpoint while the virus was still raging uncontrollably through many states. The root of the problem goes back to the initial response in the CARES Act. As David Dayen broke it down incredibly well in The American Prospect, “The CARES Act supplied $150 billion to states but only for emergency coronavirus spending not accounted for in state and local budgets. So, it could not be used to plug increasing budget holes. The continued shortfall was closer to $1 trillion, and it grew every minute that cities and states remained locked down. This weighed heavily on cit- ies and states and unquestionably played a role in the timing of the reopening. While most developed countries waited until their average case counts were quite low before letting people back into the world, states were pressured into salvaging their economies and bringing in some semblance of revenue by throwing open the doors. This was a direct result of not hav- ing any guarantee from the outset that state and local budgets would be taken care of. The result has been catastrophic, and the states that opened early know it. There’s no doubt that the official reopening orders gave many residents confidence to venture back out when they should have stayed home, lead- ing to the wider outbreaks. And there’s no doubt that these THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC: RUNNING AROUND IN CIRCLES LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER — OPINION By Mark Anderson, Legal and Legislative Assistant, New Mexico Bankers Association