McConnell can decide if laid-off workers sink or swim. Pass the HEROES Act to provide relief.

Until COVID-19 hit, I owned Atomic Ramen in Lexington. When Governor Beshear asked restaurants to shift to takeout & delivery-only in mid-March, we decided to shut down—for how long nobody knew. I laid off my employees, helped them apply for unemployment, and waited. I had no answers for them as to what the future held for our little 12-person noodle shop. Fast forward 4 months and our restaurant is closed for good. My employees and I don’t know what we’ll do when our unemployment runs out.

That’s been one of the biggest questions for our industry and many others — whether Congress will reauthorize pandemic unemployment compensation— namely, that extra $600 a week that has been keeping out-of-work Americans like me and my employees afloat during the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Millions of workers — many of them servers, bartenders, and cooks without emergency savings — will still be out of work when the government ends the extra payments on July 31. Scores of restaurant, retail, and other hourly wage workers who remain employed but had their hours slashed depend on the program to keep paying their bills.

The House of Representative has already passed the HEROES Act — a bill extending the benefit through January 2021, but Senate Republicans oppose the measure. Just last week, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said the payments “may well stop” in July, claiming that they act as a disincentive to returning to work.

Here’s the thing. I WANT to reopen. My employees WANT to work again. But in the current climate of rising infection rates and states (rightly) shutting down and tightening restrictions again, restaurants and bars can’t possibly stay open and break even, much less make money. Restrictions aside, consumers and diners simply aren’t going out and spending money right now. If those extra payments stop, workers have no jobs to return TO. Most wage workers can’t get by on austere state benefits — particularly minimum wage employees living in zip codes hardest hit by the virus.

If anything, this pandemic (and more tellingly, the federal government’s response) has revealed the stark racial & economic inequities in our society. Many other developed nations shut down their economies while financially supporting the workers and businesses in need, increased testing and worked to get infection rates down, and only then reopened their economies so that businesses can not only survive but thrive.

Meanwhile in the USA, we’ve received a total of ONE $1,200 stimulus check — which for many is no more than one rent payment — and a poorly conceived Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan which has been nearly impossible to navigate. Not to mention PPP loans and federal stimulus money supposedly for struggling small businesses and working people have landed in the hands of large corporations and millionaires. Let’s not even get into the disaster that is employer-based health care.

We need Congress to extend the extra $600 per week unemployment checks until the pandemic is under control and the economy has a chance to reopen in a sustainable way. Congress also needs to fund state unemployment agencies in order to hire more people to process claims to get money into people’s pockets and extend eligibility to working people who have been excluded, like undocumented immigrants and recent high school and college graduates.

On July 25, we will receive our final adequate unemployment check. After that, the best we can hope for is below-poverty levels of unemployment benefits. And we’re not alone, there are hundreds of thousands of other Kentuckians in the same sinking boat. As Senate Majority Leader, Senator McConnell has the power to decide whether my workers and I sink or swim. If he truly cares about Kentuckians, he needs to push Senate Republicans to pass the HEROES Act.

Every Kentuckian deserves economic security. We are not asking for anything more than a chance to survive this pandemic. I hope our elected leaders take action soon, because our lives and livelihoods are hanging in the balance.

Dan Wu is a Lexington restaurant owner and community organizer.