The unintended consequences of the coronavirus stimulus

Life in America has been flipped upside down.

With over 25,000 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths around the globe, to call the months of February and March a sobering experience would be an understatement.

As terrifying as the outbreak of COVID-19 is, however, I speak on behalf of millions of Americans when I say that I am even more unnerved by the destruction of freedom going virtually unchallenged by our elected leaders. In the last two weeks alone, one-third of Americans have found themselves under a new series of “stay-at-home” orders from busybody mayors and governors. And if that were not bad enough, we now have a $2 trillion stimulus (not including a possible $4.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve) that will do nothing but satisfy special interests and plunge the U.S. even deeper into an inevitable economic meltdown.

Why? So a handful of desperate politicians can boast to their constituencies about how much taxpayer money they allocated to fight the coronavirus outbreak.

At best, these heavy-handed, economically illiterate measures represent nothing but short-sighted, knee-jerk reactions to a crisis that can only be overcome with science. At worst (and I hope I’m wrong), they represent politicians’ latest attempts to suit their own political agendas by flooding targeted parts of the economy with astronomical sums of money. While everyday Americans wonder where their next meal will come from, Congress conjures up irrelevant proposals like $35 million earmarks for museums, $75 million payouts for National Public Radio (NPR), and new mandates on airline emissions.

We need adults in the room — people who care about the consequences of expanding government dependency, bailing out corporations, and blindly cutting checks to millions of people without asking where the money will come from. With every new government “solution” there are three ways politicians can secure the funding: raise taxes; borrow the money; or print the money.

The only people who aren’t hurt by this sort of reckless behavior: the political elite. But while the consequences span every other fragment of the population, the heaviest impact is always felt by two groups in particular: those on fixed incomes; and the future generations who will be left to deal with the national debt and mass inflation of the U.S. Dollar.

And when those generations are left to shoulder this tremendous burden, historians will ask where the sane voices were. Where were the people warning of the dangers of currency manipulation and out-of-control spending? Where were the people decrying the perpetual massacre of our civil liberties? Where were the people demanding that the federal government get out of the way so our doctors and innovators could provide life-saving medical equipment and testing to more people?

It is not the scheming lobbyists or the smug bureaucrats who infuriate me most; it is the so-called “patriots” who campaign on freedom during election season only to turn their back on it at the first sign of adversity. Such weakness is exactly what tyranny needs in order to subdue free societies. We either believe in liberty in times of crisis, or we do not believe in liberty at all.

The bottom line is this: For those in public office, competency in times of emergency is too often judged by the ability to seize power and exert control over large numbers of people. If there is a silver lining somewhere in the COVID-19 crisis, I hope it is that the American people can finally catch a small, firsthand glimpse of what happens when the power of government exceeds its limits — and turn this ship around before it is too late.

Cliff Maloney is the president of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL).