Perspectives: Government Can’t Wait Any Longer To Get Supplies For Hospitals; Who Needs Most Help From Stimulus Packages?

Boston Globe: Trump Must Act Now To Boost Production Of Medical Supplies
Pulling the levers allowed by the Defense Production Act wouldn’t be a magical instant solution to the supply shortage that this administration allowed to fester for months after the coronavirus first popped up. And using the law to its fullest potential would require more managerial competence than the administration has demonstrated thus far. But it could speed things up, and it would signal, for a change, that the federal government really has everyone’s back. (3/23)

NBC News: #GetMePPE: Why Fully Equipping Health Care Workers Against Coronavirus Keeps Us All Safer
Health care providers — including physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and more — are projected to be the bottleneck resource in providing care for COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks. Even if we have enough beds and ventilators (which itself is not a given), the surge plan recommended by the Society of Critical Care calls for nonintensive care unit physicians and other providers without specialized critical care training to be pulled in to help care for the overwhelming number of patients. (Carri W. Chan, 3/23)

The Wall Street Journal: The Pelosi-Schumer Coronavirus Contagion 
What a spectacle. Much of America is quarantined at home, the public is so panicked there’s a run on toilet paper, the country desperately wants reassurance, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer decide to take a bipartisan rescue bill as a political hostage. (3/23)

Los Angeles Times: Coronavirus Stimulus Package Should Heed Lessons From 2008 
In 2008, the Obama team decided that the top priority was bailing out the Wall Street firms. This took precedence over addressing the huge downturn in the real economy, which ultimately cost 9 million people their jobs and one in 10 American families their homes. Although the financial world needed public money to stabilize, in retrospect the right focus would have been to reduce the impact on all Americans of what came to be called “the Great Recession.” The failure to provide a rapid recovery for all cast a pall over the Obama administration’s eight years, increased economic and social division, and made it difficult for the country to come together even in the current crisis. (Reed Hundt, 3/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Conservative Principles In An Emergency
Democrats on Capitol Hill are seizing on the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to force through their own longstanding and unrelated legislative priorities. Conservatives shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for our principles. To us, this crisis demonstrates that government is too big and unfocused. We want it to function well at its core responsibilities. (Bobby Jindal, 3/23)

The New York Times: The Coronavirus Bailout Stalled. And It’s Mitch McConnell’s Fault.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky failed to do his job this weekend. As the economy spiraled downward, Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said he would produce a bipartisan bailout bill authorizing an infusion of desperately needed aid.Instead, Mr. McConnell emerged on Sunday evening with a bill that would provide a lot of help for corporate executives and shareholders, and not nearly enough for American workers. (3/23)

The New York Times: Republicans Add Insult To Illness
If you want a quick summary of the state of play over fiscal stimulus legislation, here it is: Republicans insist that we should fight a plague with trickle-down economics and crony capitalism. Democrats, for some reason, don’t agree, and think we should focus on directly helping Americans in need. And if legislation is stalled, as it appears to be as I write this (although things change fast when we’re on Covid time), it’s because Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is holding needy Americans hostage in an attempt to blackmail Democrats into giving Donald Trump a $500 billion slush fund. (Paul Krugman, 3/23)

CNN: Trump Uses Daily Coronavirus Briefings To Replace Campaign Rallies 
President Donald Trump complained that he is treated unfairly. He touted his tax cuts. He told his usual lie about how he is the one who got the Obama-era Veterans Choice program passed into law… The coronavirus crisis has prevented Trump from holding his signature campaign rallies. So he has turned his daily White House coronavirus briefings, like the one on Sunday, into a kind of special spinoff of the familiar Trump Show — replete with all the usual misinformation, self-promotion and potshots. (Daniel Dale, 3/24)