Lee Ohanian discusses the social safety net with PBS News Hour
UCLA’s Professor Lee Ohanian was interviewed by PBS News Hour’s Daniel Bush, to discuss how COVID-19 could reshape America’s social safety net and how this could affect the upcoming election. An excerpt of the article can be found below.
Could the coronavirus reshape America’s social safety net?
By Daniel Bush
The Democratic primary race was all but over before the novel coronavirus upended the 2020 campaign cycle last month. With former Vice President Joe Biden as the nominee-in-waiting, the only lingering question had been how far he might shift to the left to win over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ progressive followers before formally clinching the nomination.
But in the weeks since the pandemic brought traditional campaigning to a standstill, the national political debate has moved away from the narrow ideological battle on the left that dominated the primary season.
Now, Americans across the political spectrum have been forced to rethink the government’s role in protecting workers and supervising the economy, as more people confront a public health crisis that has exposed major gaps in the social safety net.
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