We Need More From Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/baker-murphy-coronavirus-response.html

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When we all began to learn more about the spread of the new coronavirus in January, we knew it was only a matter of time before it would find its way to our nation’s shores.

While the thought of preventing it from infecting any of our residents was optimistic, it quickly grew unrealistic against the backdrop of our interconnected world. We each aggressively prepared, assessing how this virus could affect our states.

No one doubts that the coronavirus is here and in force. We are in a full-scale war against this virus, an invisible enemy fueling a global pandemic, and our individual efforts have been focused exclusively on emergency response and mitigation in the states we govern. Our preparedness efforts are tested daily, and we have engaged teams of experts to help us try to stay one step ahead.

Our states are densely populated, with bustling economies, active public transportation and international airports — we understand that for New Jersey and Massachusetts, the risks are significant. The war we’re fighting requires unprecedented action, making decisions that in many cases have never been made.

We have had to shut down, practically overnight, entire sectors of our economies, putting hundreds of thousands out of work or limiting how much they can work.

We have closed schools, leaving millions of schoolchildren to learn remotely from home, without the familiar trappings of their classrooms and the in-person leadership of their educators. We’ve canceled gatherings, including weddings and funerals. We‘ve asked millions of our residents to stay at home unless they need to go out or are essential to our front-line responses. And when they do, we have asked them to practice social distancing.

For us, these decisions are personal. We know the faces we have affected, because they are those we would see on the daily basis as we traveled our states. And we have done all of this knowing there is no deadline for when we can return their lives to normal.

This is what makes direct support from Washington so essential.

Foremost, we need the federal government to support states’ efforts to secure personal protective equipment and lifesaving items like ventilators. The government must boost private-sector manufacturing of these critical supplies now and get out of the way of states when we seek private-sector suppliers and release more materials from the national stockpile to meet our pressing needs.

Our current state resources have not only been stretched to their limits; with our economies currently at a standstill, there are no new revenues coming in to support their continuation. And with no idea when this emergency will end — pandemics are stubbornly ignorant of calendars — we cannot risk the collapse of the systems our residents are relying on to maintain their homes and feed their families.

Even when we are able to lift our states of emergency and direct our businesses to reopen and our people to once again move freely, it will take time for our economies to recover. We can already estimate the impact of our actions to date in billions of dollars in lost economic activity. We can’t simply make this up when the emergency ends and we begin to restart our states.

We made these decisions to protect our residents. It would be cruel for us to slash the programs our residents are depending on to get their lives back to normal.

This is what has made the federal rescue bill a crucial first step in supporting our states’ survivals, let alone our nation’s. But to be clear, our states will need more support. And we will continue to fight for more. Our work in this effort has only just begun.

With more than $150 billion in direct financial assistance to states in the relief bill, we can start making up for some of the loss of revenues we had projected for our budgets and ensure our ability to provide core services. We can begin backstopping our unemployment systems and protect their solvency at a time when record numbers of residents are overwhelming our state websites. We can help protect our public transit systems from collapsing — many of them were already planning long-term capital investments that relied on growing ridership.

And providing a majority of our residents with a direct cash payment is a needed step in ensuring that families will have housing security and be able to support the economy during this emergency.

We will need more to continue to fully support the front-line heroes who have emerged in our fight against the coronavirus: the doctors, nurses and public-health workers tending to the sick; the members of law enforcement and public-safety operations who are looking after our communities; the grocery store workers keeping a supply of food and other essential goods on the shelves; the janitors and custodians cleaning our buildings; and the many others who have put serving their fellow residents above serving themselves.

Our states are diverse collections of millions of residents with equally diverse viewpoints. We hardly ever agree on anything at the same time. But on one thing we have found common purpose. Our states are, at their core, families — just as we are all part of the American family. And as any family does in times of crisis, we come together, and we look forward with confidence that we’ll emerge stronger than before.

Phil Murphy is the governor of New Jersey. Charlie Baker is the governor of Massachusetts.

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