Consider the crossroads of crises in two front-page stories in Tuesday’s Sun-Times:
Ald. Tom Tunney was caught serving customers indoors at his Ann Sather restaurant during the pandemic, violating state and city orders. He shouldn’t have done this, as he admits, but there is no question restaurants are desperate.
And 450,000 unemployed people in Illinois, such as the worried, single mother in Chicago named April Ibanez, are in danger of losing their unemployment benefits on the day after Christmas. Ibanez was furloughed from a restaurant job last spring when the pandemic first hit.
The two stories tell a single story about how the coronavirus pandemic is hammering our nation’s economy, with devastating consequences for small businesses and individuals alike.
The most responsible national response, both to save whole sectors of the economy and to help people in desperate straits, would be a more aggressive federal financial stimulus — on a scale already seen in some other countries.
Getting home safely
Our nation will get through this pandemic. Vaccines are on the way. The only question is whether we will get there as humanely as possible, practicing the rules of mitigation, without allowing COVID-19 to lay waste to our economy and livelihoods.
Congress is contemplating a bipartisan $908 billion pandemic relief package, which beats nothing at all. It is better than an earlier $500 billion plan put forward by Republicans, even if it falls far short of a $2.2 trillion package put forward by Democrats. But if the aim is for our nation to emerge from this crisis stable and whole, positioned to bounce back, it simply is not enough.
Unemployed workers would receive $300 a week of enhanced federal jobless benefits, just half of the $600-a-week boost workers received from last spring’s CARES Act. Small businesses would be similarly shorted. Most notably, a $120 billion proposal to assist independent restaurants and bars with fewer than 20 locations — the Restaurants Act — is nowhere to be found in this relief package.
Taylor Street vs. Olive Garden
How might this play out, just as an example, as we creep toward a post-pandemic world? A great little Italian restaurant on Taylor Street — a family business — might be forced to close permanently, even as some deep-pockets corporate chain like Olive Garden sweeps in. And even that Olive Garden is no sure thing.
The restaurant and bar industry is expected to lose $240 billion this year, the Washington Post reports, and some analysts warn that 85% of small, independent restaurants will close without federal help.
In a letter to Congress on Monday, the National Restaurant Association warned that “500,000 restaurants of every business type — franchise, chain and independent — are in an economic free fall.”
By all means, the NRA urged Congress, pass that $908 billion stimulus package if it’s the best you can do for now. But think of it as a “down payment” toward a larger relief package early next year.
No fault of their own
In normal times, we might understand the reluctance of Republicans to support more generous government assistance to businesses and workers. The free market picks winners and losers. But these are not normal times, and nothing about them reflects the workings of free markets. They reflect the workings of a modern-day plague.
The celebrated cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather are as good as ever, and Tunney would reopen his restaurant for indoor dining in a heartbeat — this time legally — if he could. And April Ibanez would like nothing more than to find a new job in the hospitality industry, preferably on a day shift so she can put her 3-year-old daughter, Ruby, in day care.
But it’s just not happening.
Congress “should understand,” Ibanez told Manny Ramos of the Sun-Times. “People have bills to pay, children to look after, and we just can’t do it right now.”
Pull out the stops
The argument, put forth by some Republicans, that more generous unemployment benefits would encourage slothfulness is absurd. The argument that a larger stimulus package would dangerously run up the federal deficit, coming from a Republican Party that has padded the deficit by $6.6 trillion in the last four years, is dishonest.
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood during the Great Depression — and as leaders of other countries understand now during the pandemic — there are times when a nation must pull out all the stops.
Japan’s economic stimulus during the pandemic has been equal to 21.1% of that country’s gross domestic product. Canada’s has been equal to 16.4% of its GDP. But the United States, where the social safety net was so much smaller to begin with, has provided stimulus funding equal to 13.2% of GDP.
For the sake of every business and every worker, we can do better.
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