The businesses which deserve to be bailed out because of coronavirus — and the ones which definitely don't

Boeing, McDonalds and Trump's own hotel chain? I don't think so

The specifics of the bailout package have yet to be ironed out (AFP via Getty Images)

In the age of the coronavirus, we can be excused for thinking we elected President Oprah Winfrey after all. “You get a bailout! And you get a bailout!” we cry, riffing on Oprah’s car giveaways to audience members back in the day.

Three weeks after I wrote — cynically, I thought — that President Donald Trump’s feckless incompetence in the face of a pandemic would double the federal deficit to $2 trillion, it’s likely the Senate will vote Monday on $2 trillion in new stimulus to keep the economy from cratering.

Say this for Trump: He’s performed the wrecking of the US economy we’ve come to expect of Republican presidents in three years — it took George W Bush eight. The economy may have shed 3.5 million jobs last week, wiping out every private sector job added in America since May 2018.

With this much federal dough bandied about, there’s no shortage of people who would like to get some. Trump, for one, acknowledged he’ll probably seek help for his smallish hotel empire, whose flagship DC hostelry is only 5 per cent full on recent nights. How to tell all the people who want money without a scorecard? Bailout Santa is here, with the guide to the deserving, and the not-so-much, as the bill is pounded into form.

The good list

Restaurants: No one’s unfamiliar with the parlous state of restaurants, forced to close to all but takeout business in much of the country. In my town, this leads to the anomaly of Lorena’s, a top-100-ranked US restaurant as recently as 2016, with a sign in its window for takeout, a mark of desperation as poignant as any I want to see.

Restaurateurs employ 12 million Americans, living all around us. The proposal set for a vote Monday sets aside $350 billion for small businesses, and restaurants will likely get most of it. Let’s hope it’s enough.

Next, the easy one for everyone but Senate Republicans:

Low-income workers go on the nice list — but whether they’ll get properly taken care of is up in the air.

One hangup in the Senate is whether the aid will require businesses not to lay off workers. Opposing that is weird, even for a dedicated tool of corporate interests like McConnell, since avoiding an avalanche of layoffs is why we’re spending $2 trillion. Another oddity is that Republicans seem determined to nickel-and-dime lower-income workers, trying to give millions of them smaller cash stimulus payments than families making nearly $150,000 a year.

Replaying Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, with its resentments against working people for paying too little in income taxes, is not a winner. Economically or politically.

Here’s a harder case.

Airlines: Don’t believe the hype that they blew all their money on stock buybacks.

Anyone who knows airline finances knows that for years, airlines went crazy during good times, and got caught with excess capacity (both workers and planes) when slowdowns hit. This time, finally, airlines showed discipline, running planes more than 80 per cent full, and profitably, and had no need for the bankruptcies and layoffs that roll through the business in every recession.

America needs airlines, and they don’t need much money. American Airlines said it’s losing $50 million a day, or $4.5 billion over the likely three-month duration of the crisis. Lend it to them: Airlines’ problem isn’t mismanagement, it’s that the government’s botched response to coronavirus emptied planes overnight.

But give them loans with a no-layoff pledge (and a buyback moratorium until they pay it back), so their workers, among other things, can go out to restaurants. Same for the hotel business, which is seeking $150 billion. Saving the economy, not specific companies’ shareholders, is the point.

The Naughty List

Boeing? Yes, the maker of the 737-MAX — the plane model that crashed twice in its first few months of use, killing 346 people and roiling airlines that planned to rely on it — wants a bailout.

Boeing doesn’t have a coronavirus problem: It has a MAX problem, which should be worked out in bankruptcy reorganization if needed. No one will need to explain to Boeing workers that their bosses, not Congress, punted their jobs away.

McDonalds. The fast food giant entered this conflagration with cash on its balance sheet equal to five days’ sales — then lobbied against paid sick leave for workers who quarantine. McDonalds has plenty of credit available to keep workers on. Its franchisees can figure it out, too. They get coal — a stiff minimum-wage hike next year, plus paid leave, to make them get the point.

Spring break doofuses, of all ages. We’ve all seen the tape from Miami of college kids going on about their right to party even if they spread the virus, in tape recruiters will play back for them at job interviews. We told you to stay off social media when you’re drunk, son. Did we have to mention CBS Evening News, too?

Trump. From “I alone can fix it,” his boast at the 2016 GOP convention about a near-full-employment economy, to making a fool of himself daily. Gloating Sunday over Romney’s having to quarantine himself for two weeks after being exposed to coronavirus by a fellow GOP Senator was an especially graceless touch.

The crisis makes it likely Trump will approach the fall election with the worst job-creation record since Herbert Hoover. Even if the stimulus prevents that, he’ll get little credit for cleaning up the mess he made.

Still, Democrats should slip a provision into the bill preventing his hotels from getting federal money. After all, Don, only you can fix it.

At least his reaction to the 73-year old Romney’s exposure to a virus often deadly to seniors gives us the exact words we’ll use November 4th to comfort Trump himself.

“Gee, that’s too bad.”