NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo accused U.S. political leaders of dangerous partisanship in their response to the coronavirus pandemic, while new data on Wednesday confirmed that shutdowns to fight the outbreak had severely crippled the economy.
Rescue workers push a stretcher with a patient outside the ER area at Holy Cross Hospital, amid an outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., April 20, 2020. Picture taken April 20, 2020. REUTERS/Marco Bello
Cuomo, a Democrat who has ridiculed Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for suggesting states stung by the crisis should be able to declare bankruptcy, said politicians should band together to save lives, not blame one another and hold up funds, ahead of a Nov. 3 U.S. election.
“The politicalization of what we are going through in this country is extraordinarily dangerous,” Cuomo told a briefing.
“I’ve heard this music before. This is the music of a campaign season, this is the music of a rally, and balloons and ‘It’s us versus them’ and ‘We’re good and they’re bad’ and that is poison right now as to where we are,” he said.
New Commerce Department data showed the economy shrank at its sharpest pace in the first quarter since the 2007-2009 Great Recession as states imposed stay-at-home orders, ending the longest expansion in U.S. history.
“The economy is in free fall, we could be approaching something much worse than a deep recession,” said Sung Won Sohn, a business economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “It’s premature to talk about a recovery at this moment, we are going to be seeing a lot of bankruptcies for small and medium sized businesses.”
With millions of Americans out of jobs since th