A Cruel Motive for a Costly Delay

For a few hours on Wednesday, it seemed the Senate still could not muster the will to start pumping trillions of desperately needed dollars into the American economy.

Four Republican senators — Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Rick Scott of Florida — announced they had found a flaw in the economic stimulus legislation so grave that they would be forced to delay its passage.

The proposed unemployment benefits, they said, were much too generous.

Yes, that’s right: They worried the federal government was in danger of doing too much to help low-income workers whose jobs are being sacrificed to save lives.

The views expressed by the four senators are not just meanspirited but misguided, for reasons we will explain below. Yet the senators’ timing was even worse. The United States has never experienced a comparable collapse in economic activity. Thousands upon thousands of workers are losing their livelihoods with every passing day that Congress continues to drag its feet. How could it be that any senator did not grasp the urgency of this moment in American history? How could it be that any senator would threaten further delays to prevent a few thousand workers from getting a few hundred dollars in extra aid?