While Mitch McConnell wasted even more time this week with another symbolic coronavirus "relief" bill, states are struggling to come up with a solution for saving bars and restaurants while still keeping their populations safe. They remain the establishments hit hardest by the economic disaster that came with the pandemic, and the help they need is nowhere in sight.
That's even with bipartisan House and Senate bills designed expressly to help independent bars and restaurants where the previous effort, the Paycheck Protection Program, failed. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) That provided loans for businesses to keep employees on payroll for eight weeks, but as the pandemic is stretching well into its sixth month they need another plan. They need support for paying rent and licenses and utility bills as well as payroll if they're going to survive. This is critical because "restaurants are dying," says chef Marcus Samuelsson. "Four out of five of our favorite independent restaurants may not survive this shutdown."
Independent restaurants make up half a million small businesses, employing 11 million people directly. Meanwhile, McConnell's only plan for small businesses is more PPP loans—loans that have helped lots of businesses but which have also been hugely problematic and poorly run, if not out and out corrupted by the Trump administration, going to "businesses" like these: "A suspicious online university whose curriculum appears to be cut and pasted from a European school, two companies with nearly identical websites and two others with practically no internet presence—all five of these businesses are connected to the same Texas man."
Now, with the pandemic still deadly active all over the country, bar and restaurant owners are clamoring for the only thing they think they can achieve—being allowed to reopen. Even though it's clear the most dangerous scenario for transmission of the disease is people packed together in places like bars, drinking, talking loudly, laughing. It's happening, too. Like in New Jersey which currently has a fairly low case count. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is reopening indoor bars and restaurants at partial capacity, even while he acknowledges there is "no question" that it's not entirely safe. Because they can't survive otherwise. "Our restaurant industry's been crushed. They deserve this," Murphy said on MSNBC last week.
There's certainly an alternative. There's the Restaurant Act in the House, which would provide $120 billion in grants to independent restaurants and bars and which has the support of 5 Republicans, along with 183 Democrats. The companion bill in the Senate is sponsored by Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, and has 27 cosponsors. That would pass in both chambers, if McConnell would allow it. It would help millions of people. It would help save the economy, now and whenever we're finally out of this pandemic and people will want to rush out to restaurants and bars again. There will need to be some that are still open to go to.