When kids ask their parents for a dog, most parents will only agree to buy the dog if the children promise to take care of it.

But what if, as often happens, the parents get the dog but the children then fail to take care of it? Of course, the parents will step in and take care of the animal as best they can while also reminding the children to do their part as often as possible.

But what if the children not only continue to fail to take care of the first dog they own, but also ask for a new dog on top of the one they already are not taking care of? No responsible parent would ever agree to that would they?

And it would be absolutely crazy if the parents then agreed to not only buy their irresponsible children a new dog, but then promised to buy them a new dog every year regardless of whether or not the existing dogs were being cared for, right?

Well that is exactly what Congress did this week with the Great American Outdoors Act. The federal government already owns more than 640 million acres of land throughout the United States. This is a total larger than the entire areas of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the Netherlands combined.

According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, there are more than $19.38 billion dollars worth of neglected maintenance projects on these existing federal land including significant backlogs at Arches, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Zions National Parks.

These projects include everything from roads and buildings to trails, bridges, and water systems. When these features are ill-kept, it makes it harder for Americans to enjoy the outdoors, and it also makes wildfires and other natural disasters more likely to occur and harder to maintain.

The Great American Outdoors Act does spend over $10 billion addressing this maintenance backlog, but then it turns right around and spends $900 million mostly acquiring new federal lands not just this year, but every year for eternity.

And while the money for buying new land in the bill is infinite, the resources for maintaining the newly acquired lands is not. The existing maintenance backlog will only grow, meaning more neglected infrastructure and worse wildfires. This bill is a natural disaster waiting to happen.

Worse, the more land the federal government buys, the smaller the tax base for our rural Utah counties. The Payment in Lieu of Taxes program was supposed to address this disparity by compensating counties and local communities for the loss of property taxes. But PILT payments have not adequately compensated rural communities. A Utah legislative commission recently found that Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands both in Utah cities and within one mile of Utah municipal boundaries should have delivered the state $534 million in annual property taxes. Instead, PILT payments to Utah totaled just $41 million … just 7.7% of the potential gain from property taxes.

We could have voted on amendments to address these problems with the Great American Outdoors Act.

One of my amendments would require state legislative approval for any land acquisition proposed in that state, so that land acquisition would be something Washington does with the states rather than to the states.

Another of my amendments would require the federal government to dispose of current federal lands before acquiring any new ones – forcing land agencies to exercise fiscal responsibility and prioritize which lands they keep under their control.

I’ve also got a number of amendments that would reform the NEPA process to help address the maintenance backlog on neglected land Washington already owns.

And finally, I have an amendment to support Utah’s interests under the Antiquities Act. Right now, other states are protected from unilateral land grabs by the federal government for designation of national monuments; and because 28% of the national monument acreage designated in the 50 states over the last twenty-five years has been in Utah, my state is due the same kind of protections that Wyoming and Alaska already enjoy.

These amendments were all written and filed. The Senate was literally doing nothing else. We could have easily debated and voted on each of these amendments. The floor was empty all day.

But instead not a single amendment was allowed to be debated or voted on. The Senate was created to be the place – the one place in our constitutional framework – where our diverse, divided nation could come together, air our disagreements, and find common ground.

The only reason the United States Senate was given the powers we have, by the Founders and by our constituents, is to facilitate those vital conversations. This isn’t the New York Times op-ed page. We’re not supposed to be afraid of debate here. But right now, we are abusing our constitutional privilege. We are willfully taking the powers the American people have given us to deny them their right to a diverse, deliberative, transparent lawmaking process. And for no other purpose than our own convenience.

This week was a complete failure of policy and process in the United States Senate. We must change how business is done in the Senate, or change will be forced on us.

The biggest mistake policymakers can make as we begin to dig out from the covid-19 shutdown is assuming that we’ll be able to intuit all the answers.

In the initial emergency, as workers were ordered home and businesses closed, our first reaction was to give money to businesses and workers to make up for lost incomes. But this was always a short-term solution. The urgent task was getting money out the door. And we have. Both Congress and the Federal Reserve have made trillions of dollars available to American businesses and families to help get through the shutdown phase of the crisis.

But as we move from the emergency phase of this epidemic to the recovery phase, Congress needs to be more flexible and more inclusive in our policymaking. We need to recognize that there are more solutions than we can craft with government programs and certainly more than we can sustainably finance.

Recovery policy can’t just be a matter of pumping more money into a few programs that were created on the fly at the height of the covid-19 panic. And while Congress should get back to work soon developing more robust and flexible programs for the next phase of pandemic response policy, there are two ideas we could implement this year that would serve as force multipliers for our efforts.

The first would be to greatly enlarge the charitable giving tax deduction. The nonprofit sector of our economy is being hit at least as hard as for-profit businesses. The services our charitable organizations provide will be more urgently needed this year than ever before. Yet in the rush of relief legislation, Congress increased the deduction by only $300 per person. By increasing the charitable deduction, Congress can effectively depute the American people to identify and indeed help the communities who need it most more quickly and efficiently than government programs will be able to. A November 2019 Tax Policy Center study estimated a similar policy would lead to an additional $6.9 billion in charitable contributions per year.

The second is to create a temporary tax credit for billing forbearance. Businesses this spring and summer are going to have trouble making their normal payments for things such as rent, insurance, outstanding loans and expensive equipment. In most cases, this won’t be because the businesses are failing; it’s simply because the government forbid them from doing business for weeks on end.

Banks and investors and utilities know this, and most aren’t jumping in to foreclose. Rather, they are trying to do the right thing, through forbearance — letting renters, lessees and customers miss or reduce certain payments until the economy reopens and they have some revenue to pay those bills. Congress should jump on this opportunity to incentivize as much leniency as we can prudently afford.

Landlords, equipment rental companies and utilities could be given a tax credit — perhaps 50 percent — for discounts they provide on payments through the end of the crisis. Lenders could be given a similar credit for the value of the interest on any deferred installments.

These aren’t catchall substitutes for other state and federal policies. They would be complements — prudent pieces of a more holistic and sustainable relief and recovery policy. Policymakers need to pull every lever we can, and one of the most important levers is the one that harnesses the market economy’s wealth of local knowledge and kinetic speed to public needs.

Providing financial incentives to lenders to help businesses and communities get back on their feet as quickly as possible is a win-win. More charitable giving will mean less demand for government services. More forbearance will mean fewer bankruptcies, layoffs and a quicker recovery. And we can tap the private sector to do this part of the nation’s relief and recovery work for us — at a fraction of the cost Washington would incur and with better outcomes. That also means we in government can focus on the problems the private sector can’t immediately fix.

One-size-fits-all programs aren’t going to fit this time. We need to encourage economic actors to be flexible and creative as we all adjust to our post-pandemic world.

Op Ed originally published by the Washington Post

If you need specific guidance on how to benefit from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, please visit our Coronavirus Resource page.

Also this week:

Sen. Lee Praises Pick for DC Appeals Court

Joint Economic Committee Chairman Mike Lee (R-UT) Comments on March Employment Numbers

Sens. Lee and Leahy Comment on DOJ OIG Interim FISA Report

Sen. Lee Highlights Important Information for Supplemental Security Income Recipients

Amidst all the disruptions and frightening statistics, there is good news: we are going to defeat the Coronavirus Disease 2019. And the most important part of that sentence is the word “we.”

The time is going to come for political debates –important and contentious debates – about the United States’ response to this coronavirus outbreak.

We will need to modernize our public health systems to answer the shocking speed with which pandemics spread in this era of globalization.

We will need serious economic policy answers to the disruptions this outbreak may have on employment, investment, trade, and economic growth.

And this epidemic raises grave questions about America’s global strategy, given the Chinese regime’s role in its spread and America’s dangerous reliance on China for manufactured goods.

And of course, governments at all levels will do their part to arrest the immediate spread of COVID-19 and treat those already infected.

But in this epidemic, the “we” who will win this fight against the coronavirus is not “the political class” or “government agencies in Washington.” It’s us: you and me and our families and friends and neighbors.

Policy is important, but it is also slow. The president cannot sign an executive order to outlaw a virus, or make our aging society suddenly younger and healthier. Congress cannot pass a law magically creating millions of surgical masks, testing kits, or ICU beds.

It can appropriate money to buy these things, and has already begun to do just that. But part of reason this pandemic has been so damaging is the disruption it has caused to global supply chains, specifically for things like medicine and medical devices.

As we all know from our dealings with the DMV, the IRS, or a health insurance bureaucracy, it is simply the nature of government, especially the federal government, that it takes time. The federal response to COVID-19 will be absolutely crucial in the long run, but it’s the short run - the next few weeks - that really matter right now.

And in these critical few weeks, what you do in your community is going to be more important in the immediate fight against COVID-19 than anything either party tries to do in Washington.

Activists, pundits, and especially politicians on both sides of the aisle need to get this. Today too many on the Left are using the outbreak as a cudgel to attack President Trump, and too many on the right are downplaying the urgency of the epidemic to defend the president against those attacks. In a genuine emergency like this, mindless partisanship could literally cost lives. There will be plenty of time for political recriminations once the crisis passes.

In the meantime, we cannot passively sit by and look to government to save us. Nor can we view our political opponents as adversaries. Viruses don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Right now, we’re all in this together, and we all need to do what we can to be part of the solution and not the problem.

Wash your hands. Clean oft-touched surfaces. Practice social distancing. Avoid large gatherings, for yourself and your kids. Keep up on news from Utah’s Coronavirus Task Force. Thank you Governor Gary Herbert for acting so quickly and decisively to set that task force up.

If you’re an employee, work from home if you can. If you’re an employer, do whatever you can to help your employees stay safe and healthy – ideally at home. The more we can avoid getting sick ourselves, the more our health care professionals can focus on those with the greatest need.

And perhaps most of all, don’t forget about the most vulnerable populations: seniors, those with health issues, and especially elderly friends and family who live alone. They are going to need help, and they are going to need us. Get on the phone. Check in on them, ask them how you can help. Because you can.

The coronavirus threat is bigger than politics. But so are the American people. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to prove it. That’s how we’re going to beat this thing.

Together.