Time is of the essence. A unique feature of the current recession is that the government is determining the depth of the economic damage in real time, through its actions and inaction. To stanch job losses, policymakers need to announce that help is on the way, and that it will be retroactive to the beginning of March. Then they need to deliver that help as fast as possible.

Businesses already facing a steep drop in revenue have been placed in an induced coma by federal, state and local restrictions. In a Goldman Sachs national survey of small business owners, more than half said that under current conditions, they would be forced out of business in less than three months. The only practical way to limit mass unemployment, and to preserve previously viable companies, is for the government to pump money into the private sector.

The purpose of saving businesses is both to preserve the productive capacity of the economy and the welfare of workers. If all the nation’s restaurants were to disappear, new restaurants eventually would emerge in many of the same spaces. But there is no reason to incur the incalculable cost of destroying the old businesses and creating new ones. Far better to maintain, as much as possible, the fabric of the economy as it existed before the crisis.

Congressional Republicans on Friday proposed a bailout program that contains many of the necessary elements, but it lacks the necessary scale. It would provide $300 billion in funding for businesses with 500 or fewer employees. Each company could borrow up to $10 million, and any money used to pay wages would not need to be repaid, provided the company maintained staffing and wages until the end of June. That sum, however, is only sufficient to cover four months of wages, at the median wage, for 20 million workers — or less than one third of the workers employed by small companies. And businesses also need to pay for benefits, not to mention other expenses, like rent. Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute estimates that the amount small businesses actually need is around $1.2 trillion.

The Senate should embrace an alternative proposal by Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, to forgive up to $10 million in borrowing no matter how the money is used, so long as a company doesn’t cut back on staff or wages. Better yet, Congress should emulate the United Kingdom, which said Friday that it would provide companies with as much money as was necessary to meet their payrolls and preserve jobs. “There’s no limit on the funding available for the scheme,” said Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the Exchequer.