If anyone remained in doubt as to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, those doubts ought to have been put to rest this week. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty points out, ‘When a president who is known for his ability to spin just about anything goes before the American people and declares, with brutal honesty, “this could be a hell of a bad two weeks,’ all naivete and denial should be dispelled.”

It is clear that we remain in the thick of this situation and likely have not experienced the peak of it yet. Such sobering thoughts make dispassionate analysis of the post-COVID future difficult, but at some point we need to look beyond the current crisis and explore the alternatives more openly than we have done.

Emergencies and crises generate reflexive responses, and that is rarely the breeding ground of good policy. Two temptations arise: One, to simply Do Something, irrespective of immediate costs, in response to the sense that the moment simply calls for Something to be Done. Second, is the one probably best elucidated in modern times by Rahm Emanuel, in his Machiaveillian-tinted statement to “never let a crisis go to waste.”

There was certainly a sense of both in the dealings over the $2 trillion federal coronavirus aid package. $2 trillion certainly qualifies as “doing something”. And we saw a particularly zealous application of the Emanuel mantra in the 11th hour attempt by the Democrats to include in the package virtually everything the American left ever dreamed of.

It was a calculated political play by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On the one hand, she knew she and her party would absorb some political hits and backlash, much of which will carry on through whatever type of election season we are left with. On the other hand, she knew she wasn’t actually going to get the Green New Deal and all the other terrible ideas she demanded; however, the stunt did grant the Democrats enough additional negotiating room to slip in a bunch of smaller bad ideas. The $25 million earmarked for the Kennedy Center has received the most notoriety for its sheer brazenness, but there was plenty that went around; I struggle, for instance, to see the connection to the COVID-19 pandemic justifying $75 million to the National Foundation on the arts and the humanities.

That aside, there is little question that most of what was included in the package was necessary. The business supports are critical, and a temporary expansion of the welfare state, as regrettable as it may be, is probably unavoidable. This is an entirely government-created economic disaster – done out of necessity, but government-created nonetheless – and some government spending to help salvage it is in order.

But only as a temporary measure. The temptation, and most serious negative consequence, will be to make this emergency expansion more or less permanent – the “new normal” as it were. The typical Keynesian arguments will be dusted off, especially as the national discussion begins to turn from containing the virus and saving lives to how to recover economically.

The Keynesian apostles will, in due course, label any rollback of the expanded government an egregious and regressive slash-and burn strategy, and call for increased taxes – on the “wealthy” of course – to backstop the hypertrophied public sector. 

The correct approach would be the opposite. Many businesses need an influx of cash to help them ride out the current storm; but when the storm passes, the pro-growth supply-side policies that pulled the U.S. out of the malaise of the 1970’s, and which created the abundantly healthy economy the nation enjoyed before the virus hit, will be critical in getting everything back on track.

In Colorado we are fortunate to have our three-legged economic lifeline – TABOR, the flat tax, and the balanced budget amendment – which will prove invaluable in the recovery. But as at the federal level, the crisis will stoke the temptations of those who seek their removal; as well as other ill-advised policies that make for good sound-bites, but will amount to nothing more than kicking businesses when they are down, and ensuring they stay there.

Navigating a crisis is not conducive to good long-term policy, because one is rarely afforded the luxury of time for thoughtful analysis. Clear thinking on the economy will be as necessary in the coming recovery stage as social distancing is now. Indulging in the economic superstitions of the left will kill the goose the laid the golden egg, which is currently on life-support, right when we need it the most.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.