So much for full employment. That ended this month with the attack of the coronavirus and Thursday’s record spike of three million new jobless claims. Millions more will follow in the coming weeks, and the goal of public policy should be to get them back to work as soon as possible—not to keep them on the government’s unemployment tab.

That point may seem obvious but you wouldn’t know it from this week’s flap over the enhanced jobless benefits in the Senate’s $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. The bill increases unemployment...