The Pandemic is dead; long live the Pandemic

just two more years to flatten the opposition

Once declared, a national emergency is just too good of an opportunity to let go of

WSJ Editorial: … [W]hy hasn’t the President also declared an end to the public-health and national emergencies? If the pandemic is over, then so is the emergency. Yet the Administration continues to extend the public-health emergency that was first declared in January 2020.

The reason is almost certainly money. A March 2020 Covid law enables the government to hand out billions of dollars in welfare benefits to millions of people as long as the emergency is in effect. This includes more generous food stamps and a restriction on state work requirements. It also limits states from removing from their Medicaid rolls individuals who are otherwise no long financially eligible. The Foundation for Government Accountability estimates these ineligibles cost nearly $16 billion a month.

Most outrageous, only weeks ago the Administration used a separate national emergency declaration related to the pandemic to legally justify canceling some $500 billion in student debt. An Education Department Office of the General Counsel memo says the pandemic and national emergency enable the Education Secretary to modify federal student aid requirements under the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act.

Mr. Biden seems to want it both ways. He wants to reassure Americans tired of restrictions on their way of life that the pandemic is over and they can get on with their lives. But he wants to retain the official emergency so he can continue to expand the welfare state and force states to comply. Covid can’t be an emergency only when it’s politically useful.

Only in that last sentence does the editorial board go wrong: of course Covid can be an emergency when it’s politically useful: that’s been the sole goal of this government-invented panic all along.

Just like global warming.