The belated $900 billion pandemic relief deal that Congress announced Sunday offers some rare good news during the holiday season of a brutal year and a measure of short-term help to laid-off workers and shuttered businesses hammered by twin health and economic crises.
The most optimistic interpretation of the agreement is that despite a tortured process, a deeply divided Capitol Hill finally navigated a way to consensus, pushed by a core of more moderate bipartisan senators who catalyzed compromise in a time-honored fashion.
Steps to extend unemployment benefits, make $600 stimulus payments to some adults, raise food stamps and send money to food pantries, speed vaccine deployments and keep businesses like restaurants afloat will make a tangible difference to American lives. But it is not as if Congress had a choice, and its delay significantly worsened the pain of many Americans.
The deprivation caused by the latest Covid-19 surge came at a moment when some jobless benefits had already expired, and many citizens were facing eviction or are going hungry. New restrictions caused by the out-of-control pandemic are stifling businesses and threaten to reverse a halting recovery.
And any ideas that Sunday’s breakthrough is a model for a less dysfunctional Washington during a new presidency next year are undercut by the way the bitter process of the last few weeks revealed vast ideological chasms, suggesting the disconnect in a fractured political system is becoming ever more extreme. This was borne out by the fact that Congress keeps having to pass short-term spending bills to avert a government shutdown.
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