Even as it finalizes one coronavirus-relief package, Congress is starting to debate some much broader action. Wherever it goes, everyone should realize that the “one grand for every American” idea is just wrong here: It’s both too much and too little.
The effort to “flatten the curve” has intentionally shut down much of the US economy. What’s needed is help so that the economy can restart rapidly in a few weeks, when the lockdowns end or at least ease.
But lots of folks are still working and don’t need help. Not just frontline workers, but tens of millions now telecommuting. Others will be covered by the safety net that Congress is already bolstering, via extended unemployment benefits and so on. They shouldn’t need an extra check.
Still others need more than $1,000. The feds will likely need to bolster the net even more for those who don’t normally qualify — bartenders and restaurant servers, for example.
And figure out how businesses that will again be profitable post-crisis can get the bridge loans they need to survive — and don’t make them pay the usual doing-business fees when they’re not doing business. The country needs to avoid a cascading debt crisis, where one set of loan defaults triggers another.
But blind cash payouts will inevitably beget more blind cash payouts — ultimately weakening society’s ability to maintain a true unemployment social-safety net, rather than temporarily strengthening it.
States seeing a collapse in tax revenues likely need some grants, too — but they’ll still absolutely have to cut back somewhere, just as everyone else is, and also ease off how they burden the private economy.
The point is to keep those who normally manage fine for themselves afloat, until we all get to the other side. That goal is ambitious enough; don’t go trying airy ideas like a “universal basic income” — the idea behind the $1,000-for-everybody scheme.
This is about holding on and holding together, not a revolution.
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