Both of these programs are very good ideas. The trouble is that both are having a hard time getting started — and time is one thing millions of distressed Americans, many of whom were already living on the edge, don’t have.

On unemployment benefits: State unemployment offices, already overwhelmed by the surge in applications, aren’t ready to disburse these extra benefits, and may not be ready for quite a while — a disastrous delay for families already in dire financial straits.

Small business loans are also facing a crippling lag in processing, with potential borrowers either unable to complete the forms or being told that they will have to wait three weeks. Furthermore, for some reason the federal government, instead of lending money directly, is channeling small-business lending through private banks — and the banks are complaining that they have yet to receive crucial guidelines and that the administration is setting unworkable requirements.

In other words, it may be a long time before the economy starts getting the life support it needs right away.

And even when workers and businesses finally get the promised aid, the CARES Act doesn’t provide remotely enough money to state and local governments, which are seeing revenues plunge and expenses soar. This is likely to force big cuts in government services precisely when they’re needed most.

So what do we need right now? First, we need an all-hands-on-deck effort to resolve the bottlenecks that are holding up unemployment benefits and small-business loans.

The obvious parallel here is to the crash of healthcare.gov when the Affordable Care Act was first going into effect; things looked terrible at first, but an Obama administration expert task force, working around the clock, resolved the problems more quickly than anyone imagined possible, and new enrollments ended up exceeding expectations.