It is essential that future COVID legislation include triggers that extend whatever assistance is needed as long as is necessary—and work to help ameliorate future recessions as well.

Four reasons why:

1. We have had tremendous political will for ambitious action. But it will diminish rapidly as the intense crisis passes, we start to see large numbers on deficits and debt, and it looks like the economy is improving.

(Don’t discount how the optics of economic improvement will look. We might have several months in a row of 1 million+ jobs gained but that might still leave us in a 15 million job hole, many will want to declare premature victory and move on.)

2. The economic problems could be persistent. CBO projects a 9 percent unemployment rate at the end of 2021 and highly elevated unemployment for another 5+ years is plausible. This could be too pessimistic—but that is the beauty of triggers because this goes away if it is.

3. The United States has a highly polarized political system, currently has divided government, and likely still will. The UK with its parliamentary system can count on future discretionary actions, we cannot.

(I am more worried about one political party than the other in this regard but nothing in my argument rests on this difference.)

4. The United States has weak automatic stabilizers to begin with, among the weakest of any major economy. Because of our smaller, less progressive government we need to pass laws to cut taxes and expand assistance in downturns. Can compensate with triggers.

The Hamilton Project and Washington Center for Equitable Growth did an entire volume on how to design triggers for improved automatic stabilizers. You can get it for free: https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/recession-ready-fiscal-policies-to-stabilize-the-american-economy/

My chapter, with @MattAFiedler and Willie Powell, proposes adding Federal matching for Medicaid based on state unemployment rates. This is critical for states suffering major revenue losses and in the spirit of the existing program which already adjusts for relative incomes.

It’s easy to think that we can wait to take care of this next year. My biggest regret about the Recovery Act in 2009 is that we had that deferred and, despite trying, could not get this done as the crisis mentality faded. Let’s not make the same mistake again.