Coronavirus funds must help South Carolinians who work hard but still struggle

The coronavirus has the potential to cause widespread economic damage in South Carolina and across the country; this week alone stocks have suffered historically bad trading days. Yet Washington officials are already rushing to aid large companies with tax breaks instead of protecting the people they are elected to represent.

Each day I think about my grandparents who raised me in a little house in Orangeburg.

Each day I think about the hundreds of thousands of South Carolinians who punch the clock at work.

Each day I think about the countless South Carolinians who shower after they come home from work — not before they head into work.

These South Carolinians are the ones who need the most help from any federal stimulus or tax cut in response to the coronavirus. Without an adequate financial firewall in place, they and other South Carolinians will be the ones bearing the brunt of higher health care costs, missed paychecks and greater risks in the workplace.

This is unacceptable.

Here in South Carolina many families are already barely hanging on, and the reason is because our state has already been dealing with a health care crisis. During the year 2018, more than 500,000 South Carolinians had no health insurance; that in turn has led to our state having an uninsured rate 13 percent higher than the national average. In addition four South Carolina hospitals have closed over the past seven years, and their absence has largely impacted low-income uninsured patients in rural areas.

Despite these grim statistics our state still won’t expand Medicaid coverage, even though that simple step would give more than 200,000 uninsured South Carolinians access to health insurance. Any federal stimulus must help these economically vulnerable South Carolinians, as well as those who are low-income, live on fixed incomes or reside in rural areas.

The reality is that front-line workers like restaurant servers, bus drivers and retail store clerks — whose jobs require person-to-person interactions — do not have the luxury of being able to “work from home.” And it is difficult for many South Carolinians who potentially could work from home to actually do so: almost one-third of our state lacks access to broadband. Any federal stimulus should help provide working Americans like these with paid sick leave and child-care assistance; there must be a guarantee that low-income families in South Carolina will not lose wages if parents test positive for the coronavirus and must take care of themselves and their kids.

In addition, a federal stimulus should provide:

▪ Federal matching for employer insurance programs.

▪ A halt to all payments on federal loans, such as those made to small businesses and students.

▪ Rent and mortgage payment assistance.

▪ Food assistance.

The coronavirus is not causing our health care problems in South Carolina. But it will likely make them worse — and increase the burden on working people — if we don’t take action in a decisive way.

This is a time not only for real leadership, but for leadership that is focused on the most valuable assets of South Carolina: our people.

And this is a time to come together and approach these problems with compassion.

For as we learned in Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Jaime Harrison is a Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina.

This story was originally published March 14, 2020 at 7:19 PM.