Needed: Post-Coronavirus Mindset at the DOL
The United States Congress passed, and the president signed, the largest emergency relief package in our nation’s history. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia is on record saying that Coronavirus relief checks could go to Americans within 3 weeks.
Secretary Scalia is on the frontlines of this public health catastrophe.
The economy is in massive distress over the Covid-19 crisis – businesses have been forced to shutter; classrooms are empty; market volatility is the new normal; and nearly 3.3 million Americans filed for Unemployment Insurance last week.
America will recover. To do so, however, we must rid our economy and our health care system of holdover, pre-Coronavirus regulations and rulings that will stunt our full recovery. For instance, we now know that layered regulations and governmental glitches were the reason why testing for the Covid-19 virus was delayed.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House's Coronavirus task force, recently affirmed: “when the CDC realized, and the FDA, that both the system itself as it was set up, which serves certain circumstances very well, was not well-suited to the kind of broad testing that we needed the private sector to get involved in … the regulatory constraints, which under certain circumstances are helpful and protective of the American people, were not suited to the emergence of this particular outbreak.”
Our health care system as it pertains to patient testing during a national health emergency has been reformed, and we’re better prepared for future pandemics.
Similarly, Eugene Scalia has the opportunity to rein-in an out of date (out of control) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the Department of Labor (DOL). The DOL “remains mired in the swampiness of the failed economic dogmas of the Obama years. In the time between Donald Trump’s election and the time he was sworn into office, then-President Obama initiated a series of lawsuits against government contractors through the DOL. At their root, these lawsuits are nothing more than weaponizing the DOL for progressive legal activism, but they have yet to be withdrawn under President Trump despite an extraordinary pro-growth labor environment."
We’re suffering from a vast, unprecedented public health crisis, not a market failure. In fact, as the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said: "We may well be in a recession. But I would point to the difference between this and a normal recession. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with our economy. Quite the contrary. We are starting from a very strong position."
Just as reform at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will better position our health care system to combat future health emergencies, reform at the OFCCP will better position our economy for a strong fiscal comeback.
President Trump has praised Secretary Scalia saying, “Eugene Scalia is one of the most qualified people ever confirmed as Secretary of Labor. He will use his skills as he has over the years—and he has built an extremely distinguished career—to fight and win for the American workforce.”
That’s the leadership America needs right now; a “fight and win’ ethos at DOL. Our nation requires a post-Coronavirus mindset at the Labor Department so America can get back to work.
Whatever vestiges that remain from the Obama years at the OFCCP must be eradicated. Today, right now is the time to do it. Obama-era lawsuits based on bogus discrimination charges against America's struggling private sector – companies like Oracle and Google – cannot continue. What Secretary Scalia does on the frontlines of this historic battle against America’s invisible enemy will forever impact our country’s health and fiscal well-being.
Jerry Rogers is the founder of Capitol Allies and the host of “The Jerry Rogers Show” on WBAL NewsRadio. Twitter: @CapitolAllies.
