Fund the Front Lines

Despite more than a decade of underfunding public health and safety, those workers have stepped up to meet the crisis. Government must help them with emergency and long-term support.

by

AFSCME is a financial supporter of The American Prospect.

One of the lessons of the Trump administration’s late response to the coronavirus pandemic is, those who don’t believe in the mission of government aren’t very good at fulfilling it.

There has long been a philosophical debate in this country about how much government is too much, or too little. But it is difficult to recall a time when government leaders so brazenly abandoned their roles—in no small part because they did not believe in them.

The Trump White House has stumbled and fumbled its way through this crisis, creating confusion and providing misinformation during a time that demanded clarity and transparency.

President Trump flunked the most basic of leadership tests (“I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said about delays in testing). How could he not? Trump has spent much of his administration disparaging and dismantling essential functions of the federal government.

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But the failure to confront the pandemic in a timely way isn’t just Trump’s—and it wasn’t a fluke. Across the country during the past decade, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have seen their agencies underfunded and their jobs outsourced or discontinued by anti-government governors and legislators.

Funding for state and local public-health agencies has been cut and they’ve seen their capacity diminished. Staffing levels have never returned to where they were before the Great Recession. Public-service workers have been left without the proper tools and resources to do their jobs.

Today, those same workers are on the lifesaving front lines of the gravest public-health emergency in many decades. Nurses and health care workers, home care and child care providers, first responders and waste management workers, school employees and corrections officers: These are the workers exposed to the greatest danger during this pandemic.

Take Blake Anderson of AFSCME Local 4911, an emergency medical service worker in Northern California. He was a part of the response effort during last year’s devastating Camp Fire. This month, he was deployed to Oakland, where the Grand Princess cruise ship was docked for more than a week. He was part of a team working around the clock to treat patients on the ship and safely transport those with symptoms to appropriate medical facilities.

Blake and so many others have stepped up for their communities. That’s what dedicated government workers do. Now, the question is: Will elected leaders step up for them?

Let’s be clear: We are all now paying the price for shortsighted austerity measures that renege on the promise of government to protect us. It is time to reverse course and re-invest aggressively in public services—both to get this outbreak under control, and to make sure we’re properly equipped to prevent another one in the future.

The first two bills passed by Congress have been important initial steps. But we need to think bigger and act more boldly. The House and the Senate must move quickly to include robust general grant assistance to states and municipalities, so they can maintain services now and into the immediate future, when they are needed most.

We are all now paying the price for shortsighted austerity measures that renege on the promise of government to protect us. It is time to reverse course and re-invest aggressively in public services.

In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act assisted states and localities, primarily through Medicaid and education aid. But this approach won’t be adequate to the current challenge, especially since much of it won’t filter down to local governments. The federal government must provide each state with robust grants.

This is not a time for half measures or partisan political shenanigans—like the latest “slush fund” proposal from Sen. McConnell and the White House that allows Secretary Mnuchin to hand out corporate bailouts with no guardrails or guarantees that workers will be compensated, rehired, or otherwise made whole.

Protecting working families and those engaged in the response must be our first priority, not a mere talking point in our federal response. This is the biggest public-health emergency in a century. Public-service workers are continuing to work around the clock to meet the overwhelming demand to protect the health and safety of their communities. We can’t ask them—yet again—to do more with less. We must make sure they have the resources to do the job. Congress must act now.

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