Weekly Writers Round-Up: What COVID-19 Means for the National Debt, Small Businesses, and Handshakes

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Applications for the summer session are now open!

Massive coronavirus spending lighting the fuse on national debt bomb by Brad Polumbo (Summer 2018) in the Washington Examiner
The conversation surrounding the novel coronavirus and the ensuing societal lockdown has understandably focused for the most part on how to contain the spread of the virus, how far to push restrictions, how to stimulate the economy, and when to reopen society for business. But amid it all, the extraordinary levels of government debt being hammered through Washington have gone largely unnoticed — potentially lighting the fuse on a debt-fueled bomb that might tank the recovering economy.

At least, that’s what a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget suggests…

4 Reasons Small Businesses Are Struggling With the Paycheck Protection Program by Billy Binion (Spring 2018) in Reason
Countless small businesses have been hit hard by social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. Lawmakers say that helping those businesses is a paramount priority. But many companies hoping to cash in on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—a federal measure offering $349 billion in loans for small businesses—have been disappointed in recent days. The program has struggled to take flight amid a series of glitches, some of which will be temporary, as government workers overcome the difficulties involved in quickly creating such a massive project. Some will not be…

The Handshake: a Eulogy by Tyler Grant (Summer 2018) in National Review
My grandfather was a carpenter. I remember the first time we shook hands at church when I was very young and his leathery, calloused hands with swollen knuckles engulfed my own.

I learned a lot about him by taking his hand, and by watching him extend it to greet someone. His devotion to craftsmanship, flesh toughened by his firm hold on a hammer over decades of building homes for folks, the tenderness in how he would soften his grip to shake hands with children and the blue-haired church ladies after my grandmother passed away…