A ticking pandemic clock

When the House of Representatives and Senate return this week, they and President Donald Trump will have one last chance to help struggling American households and businesses before 2020 ends. They should seize it, especially the so-far intransigent Senate.

While there are promising signs of a vaccine on the way, the COVID-19 pandemic is surging, with unprecedented caseloads across the country. The coronavirus will be a fact of life for months to come. Even before a second wave takes full hold, the country is still dealing with the aftershocks of the first one. Yelp, a web-based customer review site, reports that that 60 percent of businesses that closed during the pandemic won’t reopen — almost 98,000 on its site as of September. And that was before the current surge in COVID-19 cases, which could force more states to order businesses to shut down or so sharply curtail operations as to make it impossible to go on.

Disaster is also looming for an estimated 12 million American workers who, as of Dec. 26, will lose the unemployment benefits Congress passed in its stimulus bill in March, and for 20 million people who will lose their eviction protections Dec. 31.

So far, though, the House and Senate are at impasse in designing a new stimulus package. The House has twice passed a bill, one in May worth $3.4 trillion, and a pared-down $2.2 trillion version in October. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell rejected both out of hand. Mr. Trump’s negotiators have been all over the map on what the mercurial, unfocused president wants.

Do not buy the specious claim that this has to do with saving taxpayer dollars. Even reliably frugal voices like the deficit-hawkish Committee for a Responsible Budget warn this is not the time for austerity. The bipartisan committee last week said the smart course would be to borrow for a new stimulus package now while slowing the unnecessary growth of debt in the long run.

There will be double economic and fiscal pressure on Congress and the president in coming days: They need to come up with a government spending bill by Dec. 11 if they’re to avoid a shutdown. And the clock is ticking: The House is due to adjourn for the year Dec. 10, the Senate on the 18th.

If there’s to be a deal, Congress needs the attention of a Trump administration that, before it’s out of power on

Jan 20, seems more interested in litigating the election it lost, pardoning the criminals among its pals, and engaging in a last-ditch scramble to dismantle every environmental protection it can, claw back unspent stimulus money to hamper the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and execute federal death row inmates.

The one thing that could perhaps refocus a narcissistic, vindictive president on the needs of the American people might be the Republican-led Senate that has protected and enabled him. And with the balance of power in the Senate hanging on a pair of runoff elections in January in Georgia, the one thing that might prompt Mr. Mcconnell and his fellow Republicans’ political survival instincts to kick in would be the realization that if they don’t help millions of Americans and small businesses avert these looming personal and economic disasters, voters would have every reason to wonder whose interests they ultimately have at heart.