Stephen Moore on why the US should begin reopening economy

White House coronavirus task force member Stephen Moore warned Tuesday on Hill.TV’s “Rising” that state officials refusing to reopen economies within the next few weeks risked pushing an economic recovery to 2021.

Moore, formerly of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, said that states risked pushing national unemployment levels to 25 percent if they remained closed for too much longer, explaining that the summer would likely be “brutally bad” for many businesses.

“I think the summer is going to be brutally bad, it’s gonna be really bad just in terms of businesses getting their feet back on the ground, they’ll be very slow hiring workers back,” Moore said.

“But a lot of this depends on when states get reopened now,” he continued. “We still have half of the states that are shut down…if those states stay closed down for another four to six weeks then all bets are off as to whether we see a recovery in 2020.”

Conservatives have pushed governors around the country to begin allowing sectors of the U.S. economy to reopen in recent weeks, while many experts disagree over whether states have reached safe levels of coronavirus infections that should precede businesses reopening.

A Harvard-NPR analysis released last week found that only nine states have reached the coronavirus testing capacity necessary to begin reopening nonessential businesses and public spaces.