It is all too typical for Washington lawmakers to operate on their own timetables without recognizing that Americans in big cities and small towns throughout the nation have lives to live.
This is the problem with negotiations over another pandemic relief package. Months have passed since House Democrats passed their proposal. Since then the White House, the House and Senate have waged a frustrating war of words.
In the meantime, millions of Americans have lost jobs and are trying to figure out how to pay bills, keep from being evicted and make the choice between food and medicine.
Americans don’t ask for much, just that our elected officials work on our behalf.
Between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, the federal government has injected trillions of dollars to keep the economy from crashing and burning. Congress needs to provide an additional economic assistance package with these three principles in mind.
One of the most discussed holdups is the sort of thing a functional Congress would resolve quickly. Democrats want to extend another $600 a week in federal unemployment payments to the unemployed. Republicans think that amount, combined with state unemployment checks, discourages people from returning to work and have offered $200 instead.
We can get caught up in that debate, but a compromise between the two numbers should hardly be tough to reach.
It’s also true that not all of those currently receiving unemployment benefits will have a jobs to return to, and that the economy, and small businesses in particular, aren’t operating anywhere near full capacity. Unemployed workers need assistance. However, a lower federal benefit would encourage those who can work to work, and help ensure that those who can’t can survive.
The second principle is to take care of small businesses better than the earlier assistance act, which left needy small businesses squeezed out of certain loans and grants. Small businesses are the under-appreciated spine of our economy, providing goods and services that support neighborhoods.
Keeping private employers like these in business is essential to an overall economic recovery, a point stressed in a letter signed by more than 100 CEOs from some of America’s largest companies, who implored Congress to provide longer-term relief to small businesses.
The third principle is a real-world dilemma that no one wants to talk about. The federal government can’t take on endless debt, and all of us must be clear-eyed about the economic toll that fighting the coronavirus will have on future generations. Much of this spending is necessary and hopefully buys time for the nation to get beyond the pandemic’s destruction. But there is a cost: That rising debt will squeeze out other national priorities and investments.
If Congress doesn’t act immediately, more jobs will be lost, more small businesses will fail and the recovery will be longer and more elusive.