The Covert Expansion of the Welfare State

The Department of Health and Human Services has just extended the COVID-19 public health emergency, originally declared on January 31, 2020, for another three months. This is despite many people in the United States thinking that there is not even a pandemic, but the public health emergency has preserved emergency use authorizations for coronavirus vaccines and certain tests and therapies while enabling expanded access to telehealth, which is critical for rural and underserved communities. But hidden in the press releases and news articles are more sinister objectives for extending these administrative powers that are supposed to provide “flexibility.”?

In March 2020, after the WHO declared COVID-19 was a pandemic, Congress included in COVID-19 relief legislation requirements for states to suspend food stamp work requirements and Medicaid work requirements for the duration of the public health emergency. They also barred states from involuntarily removing anyone from Medicaid rolls who is ineligible as a condition for receiving increased federal government allocations. Since this legislation became effective, the welfare rolls have swelled to up to 30% of the entire United States population. Many of these people are young and able-bodied. And this was exactly House Democrats’ design when they stuffed these provisions into the CARES Act and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, especially with some Republican states holding out on Obamacare Medicaid expansion and Congressional Republicans opposed to bloated federal subsidies. We are reminded once again of Saul Alinksy’s and Rahm Emanuel’s exploitation of Winston Churchill’s famous quote “never let a good crisis go to waste.”?

Furthermore, many of these young and able-bodied new Medicaid enrollees have returned to the workforce, after probably being unemployed when the pandemic first hit. Many can afford employer health insurance, but why bother when Uncle Sam can give it to you for free via Medicaid? The bottom line costs for the states, forced to use taxpayer money to tend to millions of young and able-bodied people that would otherwise be ineligible for Medicaid, will soon supersede the fixed rate of increased funding that Washington has granted them. That may be an incentive for fiscally responsible governors to turn down future batches of free money, even as there will inevitably be some hardship cases, not to mention scorn from the liberal press (Cue the headlines from MSNBC; “Governor Abbott strips 4 million Texans of their health care”).?

It is inconceivable that despite 3.6% unemployment and a labor shortage, 4.4 million more people would be enrolled in SNAP than before the pandemic and there are still no work requirements for able bodied individuals receiving federal subsidies. Citizens on all sides of the political spectrum have complained about the ongoing labor shortage through personal anecdotes, lamenting that despite all coronavirus restrictions having been eliminated, we have not completely separated ourselves from the principle of paying people not to work. Demand for consumer goods continues to outstrip supply, which has led to rampant inflation. This rampant inflation has led to over 80% of Americans believing the economy is fair or poor, despite a healthy job market and high wages. Biden and the Democrats argue that there should be more bureaucracy to solve the labor shortage and root out waste, fraud, and abuse. But as usual, they are wrong. The right way to restore confidence in the economy and solve labor shortages is to weed out unnecessary entitlement spending, restructure such programs to their original intent of helping those in poverty and the disabled, and empower individuals to work their way out of federal entitlements. This used to have bipartisan support, but no longer.?

Finally, It is baffling that the Biden Administration picks and chooses which parts of the COVID-19 emergency they want to extend. They have decided Title 42 is no longer necessary, despite the crisis at the border (on grounds that the pandemic is effectively over) and they have allowed the bureaucracy to delay authorization for antivirals and vaccines to respond to the actual coronavirus and its variants (claiming to “follow the science” by deferring to that very same bureaucracy) yet they greenlight the ballooning of the Medicaid rolls and wish to reinstate mask mandates on public transport (on grounds that the pandemic continues to pose a public health threat). This administration has proved to all Americans its blatant dishonesty, mixed messaging, and boundless cynicism.?

Congressional Democrats and the White House are covertly using a genuine public health crisis to achieve long-standing party goals, a public option via Medicaid and an expansion of SNAP. Let this serve as a warning about the abuse of emergency powers and the dangers of governing the country by administrative fiat.?