Ric Grenell calls forcing small businesses to shut their doors “un-American” and warns that recovery will take “a long time.”
Ric Grenell calls forcing small businesses to shut their doors “un-American” and warns that recovery will take “a long time.”
America’s former intelligence chief says it will take “a long time” for the U.S. economy to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, and warns that continuing “un-American” shutdowns of retailers and restaurants will drag out the eventual recovery.
Economic output in the U.S. last year was heavily dependent on public-health measures designed to limit the spread of a virus that has killed 425,000 Americans. The national economy shrank by an annualized 31.4 percent during the second quarter of 2020 before rebounding by 33.4 percent in the third quarter, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“The increase in third quarter GDP reflected continued efforts to reopen businesses and resume activities that were postponed or restricted due to COVID-19,” the agency wrote.
Ric Grenell, the onetime U.S. ambassador to Germany and former acting director of national intelligence, told Zenger News in an interview that business-shutdown policies promoted by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and California Gov. Gavin C. Newsom are misguided.
“I will tell you one wrong answer, and that’s shutting down our schools and shutting down our economy,” said Grenell.
“To have governments like the Biden administration or the Gavin Newsom administration deciding to shut down the economy doesn’t make any sense,” he said, speaking from a television studio in Palm Springs, Calif. “Gavin Newsom tried to shut down the beaches — or he did shut down the beaches — in the very early days of COVID-19. That’s not science-based. That’s ridiculous.”
“And answer me this,” said Grenell. “Why can I go to Target for an hour and a half and walk around a packed Target, but I can’t sit in a smaller restaurant for an hour and a half and have an indoor meal? None of this is making sense, and we need to recognize that this is a terrible thing that’s been brought on us.”
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and Harvard economist David M. Cutler predicted in an October 2020 commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the pandemic will cost the U.S. more than $16 trillion. That includes $7.6 trillion in lost economic output and $4.4 trillion from premature deaths through the end of 2021.
Summers and Cutler estimated $2.6 trillion in costs from long-term health complications of COVID-19 survivors and another $1.6 trillion in mental health-related costs.
Democrats in Congress are racing to pass a $1.9 trillion bill designed to provide economic stimulus, adding $1,400 per person in direct relief to the $600 checks the federal government distributed in late December 2020. Americans who earned $75,000 or above in 2019 were ineligible for the payment.
The measure could pass without any Republican votes, thanks to an unconventional process called “budget reconciliation,” a way to expedite certain spending and tax legislation by altering a previous government budget instead of debating a new one. A simple majority in the Senate could pass it — 50 Democrats plus Vice President Kamala D. Harris as the tie-breaking vote.
Grenell said reopening businesses would accomplish more than sending out a new round of stimulus checks.
“I also see a lot of families that are struggling financially because they’re hoping that the government gives them a little money, but they would much rather have a job,” he said. “And they will want to get out there. People are hungry to work.”
“We don’t have a roaring economy,” said Grenell, and without business income and a growing tax base, “there’s not going to be enough tax dollars to pay for hospitals.”
Asked whether the American economy is strong enough to quickly bounce back if mandatory business closures ended, he said: “It’s going to take us a long time to get back. But we will get back because we’re Americans.”
President Biden said on Jan. 22 that 900,000 Americans had filed for first-time unemployment benefits during the prior week. “They join millions of Americans who through no fault of their own have lost the dignity and respect that comes with a job and a paycheck,” said Biden. “So may of them never thought they would ever be out of work in the first place.”
(Edited by Fern Siegel and Kristen Butler)
