How to Solve the Fixed-Costs Crisis

Congress is working to craft an economic response to COVID-19 with admirable speed, open-mindedness, and focus on the specific goal of alleviating economic hardship. As the idea of sending immediate cash payments to households appears to be generating broad-based consensus, congressional attention is turning to the question of how best to assist businesses paralyzed for the sake of public health. The simplest and most effective solution to this problem is the creation of a Public-Health Takings Fund, to compensate businesses for the fixed costs they will incur while closed in the public interest.

[Norm Ornstein: Congress desperately needs a contingency plan]

Helping the hardest-hit businesses is difficult. On the one hand, we cannot send everyone the total revenue they might otherwise have earned