When the U.S. was dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic, government at all levels distributed lots of extra financial assistance and relaxed numerous regulations in an effort to keep the economy afloat and society functioning.
During the panic that was prevalent at the time, no one thought much about how the recipients of the benevolence might react when the aid was cut off and the rules were reinstated.
As the federal government shutdown illustrates, it is easy to create a benefit designed to address a temporary crisis. It is much harder to take it away.
Although COVID-19 is still around, it no longer presents the enormous threat that it did when it first emerged, when there were no vaccines to prevent it, and when people’s natural immune systems had not had time to create their own defenses. COVID is now about as deadly as the flu, not something to ignore, but also not something that will shut down businesses, schools and most social interactions.
With the danger posed by the virus down to a manageable level, the original rationale for providing huge additional subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces no longer exists. But because the end of those subsidies, scheduled to take effect at the end of this year, means millions of Americans will have to pay significantly more for their insurance, Democrats in Congress believe their side will eventually prevail in the budget standoff that has shut down large parts of the federal government.
Those additional subsidies, though helpful to those who received them, were not just expensive but had an unintended consequence. They may have kept others of lower income from obtaining decent health insurance in Mississippi and the nine other states that have not expanded Medicaid. One of the arguments used by expansion opponents has been that private insurance for the so-called “working poor” was already available through the heavily subsidized exchanges. Although the benefits might not have been as generous as Medicaid, the premiums for the bare-bones policies on the exchanges could be as little as zero as long as the additional subsidies were in effect.
Similar adjustment pains are being felt on the education front in Mississippi ever since the pandemic-era waivers for teachers’ licenses were ended. Because of the shutdown of schools and testing sites, Mississippi lifted for about two years the requirement that prospective teachers had to pass licensing exams. The state granted emergency licenses for five years without asking the applicants to prove that they could read and write at least on an eighth grade level and knew the content they were wanting to teach.
Since the reinstatement of the testing requirement, a larger share of prospective teachers again is having difficulty getting licensed, and some of those who were granted the waivers are running into problems getting their licenses renewed. The difficulties have prompted license applicants and some districts with large teacher shortages to renew their claim that the tests are unfairly keeping otherwise qualified educators out of the classroom.
That may or may not be true. What is true is that once the standards were relaxed, those who benefited didn’t want to see the standards reinstated.
The same thing happened when payments on college loans were suspended during the pandemic. That led to a push during the Biden era to try to forgive a huge chunk of student debt.
Policymakers should remember this pattern the next time emergency measures are being contemplated to deal with a crisis. They need to think about which benefits or concessions can be rolled back without resistance when the crisis has passed, and which ones can’t. If the changes are likely to develop a constituency that wants them to be permanent, maybe those should not be the ones adopted.
