So a few years ago, I bought a yellow rose bush from Gardens of Babylon. I was bummed because I wanted a red one. But they had a yellow one, it was on sale and I had the money, so I bought it.

The yellow roses served their purpose. They grew and filled the empty spot on the side of the house between two clumps of Siberian irises, one white, one purple. They were fairly hardy and took only a little fertilizer the first couple of years before they got completely established. After that, I would trim them in the spring and make sure the vines trailed as they were supposed to throughout the summer.

Overall, I was pleased with the plant, but still I looked at it and thought, "It would be better if it were red.

Then we had a freezing winter, not middling and wet like this one. It was seriously cold and snowy. We still had our requisite warm snaps, but it would promptly freeze again. All that warming and freezing took its toll on the plant and it died back completely. The last hard freeze of the season killed the bush to the ground.

Again I was bummed, thinking it was dead. But I decided not to give up and left it for the summer in case it would come back. Well, it didn't, not that summer.

Being that it is on a seldom traveled part of the yard, I forgot to dig it out and replace it that summer.

Lo and behold, it was providence that I left it.

It came back the next spring, but with red flowers!

I know it's a graft. It's also a metaphor.

Right now, our economy is in the middle of a hard freeze.

I know you want to go out and poke around at its dying vines. But the time isn't right to prune off what you think it doesn't need.

The time isn't even right for you to go outside.

It's hard to sit around and watch and wait for the plant to die when you think you know what it needs. It needs you, right?

Wrong.

It doesn't need you.

It needs to die back to the root ball, because it isn't the economy we want or need.

Bill Lee isn't telling us it's OK to go outside because he thinks it is. He's telling us that so the state can kick more people off unemployment.

Since he issued the stay-at-home recommendations, Tennessee has seen a 1,417.05 percent increase (18,450 claims March 14 to 279,895 on April 14) in unemployment claims. That's a lot of state and federal cash going to people that Republicans would rather not pay to stay in the safety of their homes.

But rather than keep you safe using Tennessee's budget surplus, Lee would like to push you outside into the metaphorical cold.

As Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said: “If you're an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work, and they decide not to, that's a voluntary quit," she said. "Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money."

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott said basically the same thing. Lee is a little smarter than them in that he keeps his mouth shut.

Is this the economy and the government you want, one that places the profits of businesses and the state's budget over your health and well-being?

It's the one we have.

We need an economy that works for everyone, not just the ones with money and influence.

We need a red-rose economy, not a yellow-rose one.

The yellow-rose economy worked. It paid the bills and kept us busy.

But imagine a red-rose economy. One that keeps us more than just busy. One that keeps us healthy, happy and safe. One that supports workers.

Perhaps if we let the economy die back to where it needs to be, we can grow the one we want in its place.

That is if we don't all die first because our elected officials are putting profits above our health.