On the first point: Many of the job losses we’ll experience over the next few months will be not just unavoidable but actually desirable. We want workers who are or might be sick to stay home, to “flatten the curve” of the virus’s spread. We want to partly or wholly close large business establishments, like auto plants, that could act as human petri dishes. We want to close restaurants, bars and nonessential retail establishments.

Now, there will surely be additional, unnecessary job losses caused by a plunge in consumer and business spending, which is why we should be engaged in substantial overall stimulus. But policy can’t and shouldn’t prevent widespread temporary job loss.

What policy can do is reduce the hardship facing those who are temporarily out of work. That means that we need to spend much more on programs like paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid that aid Americans in distress, who need far more help than they’ll get from an across-the-board cash drop. This spending would also provide stimulus, but that’s a secondary concern.

Which brings me to my second point. The usual suspects are already objecting that helping Americans in need reduces their incentive to work. That’s a lousy argument even in good times, but it’s absurd in the face of a pandemic. And state governments that have been trying, with encouragement from the Trump administration, to reduce public assistance by imposing work requirements should suspend all such requirements, immediately.

Finally, about Trump: Over the past few days state TV, I mean Fox News, and right-wing pundits have abruptly pivoted from dismissing Covid-19 as a liberal hoax to demanding an end to all criticism of the president in a time of national emergency. This should come as no surprise.

But this is where the history of the Trump pandemic — all those wasted weeks when we did nothing because Donald Trump didn’t want to hear anything that might hurt him politically — becomes relevant. It shows that even when American lives are at risk, this administration’s policy is all about Trump, about what he thinks will make him look good, never mind the national interest.

What this means is that as Congress allocates money to reduce the economic pain from Covid-19, it shouldn’t give Trump any discretion over how the money is spent. For example, while it may be necessary to provide funds for some business bailouts, Congress must specify the rules for who gets those funds and under what conditions. Otherwise you know what will happen: Trump will abuse any discretion to reward his friends and punish his enemies. That’s just who he is.

Dealing with the coronavirus would be hard in the best of circumstances. It will be especially hard when we know that we can’t trust either the judgment or the motives of the man who should be leading the response. But you go into a pandemic with the president you have, not the president you wish you had.

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