How Do We Prepare for Future Pandemics?

May 26, 2020

We hope you had a great Memorial Day, and had a moment to recognize the men and women who have sacrificed their lives to keep this country safe. The response to COVID-19 has many Americans wondering, how can we prevent this from happening again? The Heritage-led National Coronavirus Recovery Commission has answered that question in its new guidelines on preventing future pandemics. Read more below. Meanwhile, Heritage is fighting the push to bail out states, which are demanding relief from financial crises of their own making. Our experts are also explaining why unemployment benefits should not be more generous than workers’ salaries. Read on to find out more. Lastly, Heritage headquarters is still closed, but social distancing isn’t stopping us from hosting great events that you can “attend” online! Check out our list of upcoming webinars to find an event that interests you.

How Do We Prepare for Future Pandemics? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission released a new set of recommendations that focus on the steps that government leaders and the private sector can take to prevent future pandemics. Effective preparedness requires looking back at where big-government policies failed and providing solutions for governments at every level to better understand the scope of both their responsibility and accountability before the next crisis. “Saving lives and livelihoods in the wake of the coronavirus requires policymakers to honestly evaluate what went wrong as we prepare for another wave of the virus and future pandemics,” said Kay C. James, president of The Heritage Foundation and chair of the commission. Read more to learn about the commission’s latest recommendations.

Why Congress Should Resist Harmful State Bailouts At a time when huge spending bills are easily being passed by Congress with little scrutiny, poorly run states are asking unscrupulous members of Congress to slip in taxpayer bailouts to rescue them from years of their own fiscal mismanagement. In response, the House of Representatives on May 15 passed a coronavirus relief bill that includes a half trillion dollars in unrestricted funds to bail out state governments for years of reckless expenditures entirely unrelated to the pandemic. According to Heritage President Kay C. James, this move is unwarranted. “There is an old adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The insanity of state bailouts must end. Sending mismanaged states hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts is basically like giving a drug addict money and telling him not to buy drugs with it,” James argues in her latest column. Read the full column to find out why such bailouts are actually harmful to Americans.

Americans Need Employment Opportunities, Not Unemployment Incentives More than 1 in 5 Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past eight weeks, and because the CARES Act provides an additional $600 per week in benefits, most unemployed Americans are getting paid more than their previous paychecks. These benefits are making it harder for businesses to reopen after temporary shutdowns, especially hard-hit ones like restaurants, hotels and retailers, according to Rachel Greszler, a research fellow in Heritage’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. “It's one thing to provide short-term and targeted unemployment benefits during forced shutdowns, but providing a year's worth of unprecedented additional unemployment benefits—up to an extra $31,200 more per worker—would cripple small businesses as they try to get back on their feet,” writes Greszler in her latest commentary. Read more to find out why excessive unemployment benefits do more harm than good.

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HAPPENING AT HERITAGE

Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James was part of ESPNU's “HBCU Day." ESPN dedicated more than 10 hours of programming to highlight Historically Black Colleges and Universities in celebration of HBCU graduates in the Class of 2020. Watch James' video message to graduates.

President Trump announced a deregulatory executive order to better enable America’s economic recovery from COVID-19, a move that Heritage’s National Coronavirus Recovery Commission has called for in its recommendations. “Government bureaucracy should not inhibit our public health response and economic recovery. This executive order rightly prioritizes the American people over bureaucracy,” said Heritage President Kay C. James in a statement. Learn more about the executive order and Heritage’s impact.

A petition asking governors to “open American society” launched by Heritage Action for America has surpassed 100,000 signatures. “Millions of Americans are losing their jobs for good as businesses shut down around the country, even while the risk of COVID-19 is decreasing in many areas,” said Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action for America. Read more about the petition.

UPCOMING WEBINARS

Wednesday at 11 a.m. Heritage will host a conversation with Sen. Ted Cruz, R.-Tex., and Sen. Mike Lee, R.-Utah, about COVID-19 and reassessing the regulatory landscape. Register for the event.

Thursday at 11 a.m. Heritage will host a virtual event, co-hosted by the Counsel of the Americas, to discuss the China challenge in Latin America. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., will give keynote remarks. Other featured speakers include Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and former White House Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for the Americas; James Mulvenon, director of Intelligence Integration at SOS International LLC; and David R. Shedd, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Register for the event.