摘要：COVID-19 has already upended the American economy, and state and local governments are scrambling to keep up in the face of an inadequate federal response. The St. Louis Federal Reserve recently estimated that in the absence of a credible and coordinated response, unemployment rates may reach as high as 32 percent in the coming months (Faria-e-Castro 2020). Social distancing measures have necessitated the closure of entire sectors of the economy across the country, and shelter-in-place orders in many cities have drastically curtailed consumer spending. We are already in recession. New unemployment claims have reached 6.6 million in a single week—doubling the record set only the week prior, and nearly ten times greater than the pre-pandemic high (set in October 1982). The federal government has declined to mount a public health response to the pandemic, and state and local governments have been forced to pick up the slack. All of this has been added to already-fragile state and local finances, stretched thin by decades of underinvestment as well as the fallout from the Great Recession.
