Congress has passed an emergency aid package that provides help directly to people affected by the coronavirus, as well as to states struggling to deal with the health and economic damage inflicted by the illness.

The legislation received overwhelming bipartisan support, passing 363-40 in the House of Representatives and 92-8 in the Senate. Wisconsin’s entire Republican Congressional delegation — four representatives and Senator Ron Johnson — voted against the coronavirus aid package.

The proposed aid package includes:

• Temporary paid sick leave for workers dealing with the effects of the coronavirus, with the federal government covering the cost. Affected workers would have up to two weeks of paid sick leave in 2020, and access to up to three months of paid family and medical leave at a minimum of two-thirds of their usual pay. 

Paid leave means that workers can afford to stay home if they are experiencing symptoms of the virus, without worrying that they might lose their job or the income they need to support their families. In speaking out against the aid package, Senator Johnson downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak and said that providing paid sick leave to people sickened by the virus or in quarantine could have the effect of “incentivizing people to not show up for work…People are going to have to work.”

Providing limited paid sick time to some workers is an important first step towards keeping communities safe. The benefits in this package only apply to employees of businesses with fewer than 500 employees, or are quarantined or sick or who have a family member who is quarantined or sick. The U.S. Department of Labor would have the option of also excluding employees who work at businesses with fewer than 50 people. We should continue to work to increase the number of workers who get paid sick leave.

The federal government would pay for the paid sick leave using a refundable payroll tax credit to employers. 

• Cover testing for everyone regardless of insurance. The legislation requires private health insurance to cover costs of coronavirus tests, but not necessarily costs associated with an office or emergency room visit. The bill also allows states to use Medicaid to cover the testing costs of uninsured individuals. The federal government would pick up 100% of the costs for testing for people who are uninsured. 

• No-cost sharing for people covered by Medicaid or BadgerCare. The bill requires Medicaid to cover testing and treatment for COVID-19 for people who are insured through Medicaid and with no out-of-pocket costs. 

• A temporary boost in Medicaid payments to states. The package includes an increase in federal Medicaid matching funds to states, on the condition that states don’t restrict eligibility requirements or increase premiums beyond where they were in January this year. These additional funds will help states manage the increased health care costs caused by the outbreak. With state budgets likely to be stretched thin, raising Medicaid payments to states also helps the state fund essential services that are not related to health, by replacing state dollars that are needed elsewhere. 

• Aid to states for unemployment benefits. The package directs $1 billion to the states for the unemployment insurance system. That amount is divided into two pieces: half would go to all states, and the other half would go to states that experience big jumps in claims and have made certain improvements to their unemployment benefits system. Some of those improvements, like eliminating the one-week waiting period for unemployment benefits, would require the Wisconsin legislature to roll back changes it made under the Walker administration. 

• Increase in food assistance programs. The package includes $1 billion for food security programs and gives the state some temporary flexibility in establishing standards for eligibility. The state would be temporarily prohibited from kicking people off SNAP (also known as food stamps) if they can’t meet work requirements. 

The package is an important first step towards keeping communities healthy, although it leaves out too many workers from paid sick leave protections. That omission is most likely to hurt workers of color, since they are less likely to have paid sick leave in the first place. Congress is already working on another aid package that will likely include direct payments to people and businesses, with the goal of blunting the economic damage inflicted by the pandemic. 

For these aid packages to be effective, we need all of Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation to be invested in protecting the health of Wisconsin families and communities, not downplaying the risk and encouraging sick people to go into work. Our representatives and senators need to work together to mitigate the harm done by the virus, to ensure that Wisconsin can rebuild once the pandemic has passed. 

Tamarine Cornelius & William Parke-Sutherland