Coronavirus first, then economic survival
Let public health officials dictate COVID restrictions, but Congress must address economic fallout now
Restaurants can’t stay open over the winter in the pandemic, so they need federal aid now. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ameya Pawar and Ted Cox
Choosing between opening the economy and shutting businesses down to slow the spread of COVID-19 is a false dichotomy.
Economic statistics have shown that — no matter whether a state imposed a stay-at-home or not — all states suffered an economic downturn in the pandemic. People simply do not want to shop in the middle of a global health crisis involving a deadly and contagious disease. They don’t want to buy new clothes; they don’t want to eat in restaurants. They want food and toilet paper — delivered to the door if at all possible.
So leave the health decisions to public officials — yes, including governors — and then leave it to Congress to address the economic fallout. Because people are dying in the pandemic, but they’re also seeing their very survival threatened by the economic calamity brought on by COVID-19.
Anyone trying to make this a simple choice between opening the economy and protecting the public health needs to recognize and acknowledge a very simple dynamic: we need to impose closings to protect the public health, and we need to provide relief to those who suffer the consequences, preferably in the form of straight cash.
As more and more governors across the nation, Democratic and Republican, are ignoring the braggadocio of President Trump and calling for people to wear masks, wash hands, and watch social distancing, it would appear the public health is in good hands, especially with vaccines in production. It’s time to turn our attention to Congress to demand a fiscal response to the pandemic, because there’s really nowhere else to go.
Unfortunately, the congressional response has been sadly lacking. Oh, Senate Republicans are eager to go big when it comes to backstopping corporate debt or providing grants to major corporations and industries, but they’ve proved themselves all too willing to leave the little guys behind.
Look just this week at the new drive for an additional COVID-19 relief package. Bipartisan, bicameral negotiators tried to break the monthslong impasse on COVID relief with a $908 billion deal providing “funding for state and local governments, unemployment insurance, small businesses, health-care providers, housing and education assistance, and more,” according to a news release from Sen. Dick Durbin, which unfortunately did not mention a commitment to cash stimulus payments. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky responded by recirculating a much smaller, far less ambitious Republican package, one that also includes immunity for corporations and businesses, guarding them from liability in suits filed over the pandemic.
Again, favoring the big guys, the major players, over the little guys. Or, as former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang put it in a tweet on Wednesday: “With $900 billion you could give every American almost $3,000. If you gave people a choice I bet the vast majority — 82 percent favor cash relief — would prefer that plan. Why care more for institutions than the people?”
This is not a case of either/or, just as it’s not necessarily Democrat versus Republican. It’s about people in need, and the federal government being the only entity able to provide it.
This is a call to action. With winter closing in, restaurants and bars can’t stay open, not even for outdoor service. Businesses that can’t stay open for business and workers who don’t have jobs where they can work need immediate aid right now.
By all means, do everything possible to slow the spread of COVID-19 until a vaccine arrives and it’s distributed to everyone, but in the meantime maybe it’s time to cure the sickness of depriving aid to those who absolutely require it.
Gov. Pritzker understands that. He shined a spotlight on bars and restaurants Tuesday and called for Congress to provide them with immediate aid, including the Restaurants Act. “States like Illinois are doing what we can to support small businesses with our Business Interruption Grants,” he said. “But restaurants and bars will have a tough time making it through this winter surge of the virus without federal support.”
The Restaurants Act, targeting restaurants and taverns, was introduced in June and passed the House last month as part of another Democratic relief package, smaller in scale than the HEROES Act passed in May, but it suffered the same fate in the Senate — utterly ignored by McConnell.
Rick Bayless, the Chicago restaurateur known for Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco, and others, seized on the slight signs of progress in Congress on Tuesday to lobby for the Restaurants Act. He circulated a letter to the public calling for the act as part of the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
“Since the very beginning of the pandemic, when restaurants were among the first businesses to be shuttered, we thought, ‘OK, help must be on the way,’” said Casey Cora, spokesman for Frontera restaurants, in a statement. “Nine months later, the problem by any measure has gotten exponentially worse and we’re still waiting for any sort of lifeline from the federal government. The initial Paycheck Protection Program was essentially an eight-week solution to what will most likely be an 18-month ordeal. And it’s ancient history by now, anyway.”
Again, abundant help for the big guys, and everyone else left to fend for themselves.
“We’re grateful for the support of leaders in Congress,” Cora added. “Rep. Mike Quigley was one of our first champions. Sen. Dick Durbin has been incredibly supportive. But the fact remains many restaurants have closed, and many more will close by the time Congress gets around to taking action.”
So it needs to take action now. And not just for restaurants and bars. Another round of $1,200 stimulus payments would help bolster the economy through the winter, as would a revival of the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits — programs that actually produced a decline in poverty nationwide even in the midst of a pandemic.
And we’re not the only ones who think so. The Economic Policy Institute published a new study just last week setting forth “Principles for the relief and recovery phase of rebuilding the U.S. economy.” Insisting that the actual nuts and bolts of the U.S. economy remain intact and vital, it urges Congress to “go big and stay big … to pass roughly $3 trillion in debt-financed fiscal support now, with the first $2 trillion hitting the economy between now and mid-2022.” It demands an ambitious approach setting a 3 percent unemployment rate as a goal, at the same time providing “public investments in early child care and education and in mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions that ramp up immediately and reach peak levels of $400 billion annually by the fourth quarter of 2021.” The study urges that this stimulus continue long after the pandemic has been handled, in order to sustain the recovery and not let it flare out the way lesser programs did in the immediate wake of the Great Recession a decade ago.
The time for action, however, is now. With people preparing to hunker down for one last winter with the coronavirus — with vaccines on the way and a full recovery in sight — we must simply find a way to get from here to there. Congress must get aid out to the people who need it, not the corporations that already have the abundant resources to weather the storm. First tackle the virus, of course, but in the process provide protection to all those who see their livelihoods put at risk.