At the start of this year, Katie Sorice’s life was look­ing up. After some finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties last year, includ­ing a peri­od of home­less­ness, she had a well-pay­ing job she enjoyed, was stash­ing some mon­ey away and always pay­ing rent. Then, as the pandemic’s effects became clear, her office job was elim­i­nat­ed March 31.

The 38-year-old was kept afloat for a time by an unem­ploy­ment pay­ment from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which sent her $600 per week on top of the $96 per week she was receiv­ing through unem­ploy­ment insur­ance. But since that fed­er­al pay­ment end­ed July 31, Sorice has been left to pay her bills and eat on $96 per week, an impos­si­bil­i­ty in the Den­ver area.

“I can’t afford rent, that’s the biggest thing right now,” she said from her apart­ment in Edgewater.

Sorice’s sto­ry is not uncom­mon. Col­orado, like the coun­try, is hurt­ing. Land­lords are not being paid, busi­ness­es are shut­ting their doors for good, chil­dren are miss­ing meals, unem­ploy­ment remains high, munic­i­pal bud­gets have been dec­i­mat­ed, and coro­n­avirus test­ing needs remain unmet in some areas.

This is the predica­ment Con­gress returns to Tues­day. Crushed under the weight of eco­nom­ic shut­downs, many Col­oradans expect the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to ease the finan­cial bur­dens this pan­dem­ic has caused. For the past sev­er­al months, their weary eyes have seen noth­ing but con­gres­sion­al stale­mates and inaction.

“If we’re not keep­ing peo­ple in their homes, if we’re not keep­ing peo­ple from going bank­rupt, then our health cri­sis is going to con­tin­ue to spin out of con­trol and we’re going to look at a decade-plus-long recov­ery,” said Rep. Jason Crow, an Auro­ra Demo­c­rat. “Peo­ple are los­ing their homes; they’re los­ing their life sav­ings. That’s a long-term eco­nom­ic hit.”

Sev­en of the state’s nine mem­bers of Con­gress will be judged by vot­ers Nov. 3 — in just eight weeks. Among near­ly every­one in Con­gress or run­ning for Con­gress nation­wide, there is a con­sen­sus that some­thing fur­ther must be done. There’s a con­sen­sus that, unlike in eco­nom­ic down­turns of decades past, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment owes the gig work­ers and restau­ra­teurs and hote­liers and man­u­fac­tur­ers of Colorado.

“The gov­ern­ment, by shut­ting them down, essen­tial­ly took away their dreams and their liveli­hood,” said Steve House, Crow’s Repub­li­can oppo­nent in the 6th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, “and I think the gov­ern­ment and all cit­i­zens who pay into it have to be respect­ful of that.”

“It’s unprecedented”

Sorice receives $96 per week in unem­ploy­ment pay­ments. If she qual­i­fied for $4 more per week in state unem­ploy­ment, she would get an addi­tion­al $300 week­ly in fed­er­al mon­ey. That’s due to the word­ing of an exec­u­tive order Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed Aug. 8 in the face of a con­gres­sion­al stale­mate over a stim­u­lus package.

The order cre­at­ed what’s known as the Lost Wages Assis­tance pro­gram. Any unem­ployed per­son receiv­ing $100 or more per week will also receive $300 in fed­er­al assis­tance. But peo­ple receiv­ing less than $100, such as Sorice and an esti­mat­ed 850,000 oth­er Amer­i­cans, do not receive the $300 fed­er­al boost.

As part of a $3 tril­lion bill, the Demo­c­rat-con­trolled U.S. House vot­ed in May to extend the $600-per-week enhanced unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fit, but a major­i­ty in the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate, along with Trump, are opposed to doing so. They wor­ry work­ers were receiv­ing more mon­ey unem­ployed than employed, remov­ing their incen­tive to find a job. They would pre­fer to extend the enhance­ment at a lev­el low­er than $600 or cap it.

“You can’t put so much incen­tive out there that peo­ple remain unem­ployed,” House said. “The $600 thing was real­ly impor­tant, I think, at the begin­ning, but it got to a point where I talked to a lot of busi­ness­es that can’t get peo­ple to come back.”

Democ­rats say such con­cerns are overblown or pale in com­par­i­son to the crip­pling finan­cial bur­dens unem­ployed peo­ple are fac­ing in this unprece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion. Sev­er­al Col­orado Democ­rats say an exten­sion of the $600-per-week enhance­ment must be the top pri­or­i­ty when Con­gress comes back Tuesday.

“The leg­is­la­tion that Con­gress adopts ulti­mate­ly must meet the moment. It ought to address the scale and grav­i­ty of the cri­sis,” said Rep. Joe Neguse, a pro­gres­sive Demo­c­rat from Lafayette who has pushed the Sen­ate to either pass the $3 tril­lion House bill, known as the HEROES Act, or craft its own large-scale legislation.

Since mid-March, 542,619 unem­ploy­ment claims have been filed in Col­orado, accord­ing to state labor data released Thurs­day, and $4.8 bil­lion in ben­e­fits has been dis­trib­uted. Dur­ing the last week in August, 5,837 claims were filed, which is both the low­est week­ly total since mid-March and high­er than the aver­age num­ber of week­ly claims dur­ing the depths of the Great Reces­sion in 2009 and 2010.

“It’s unprece­dent­ed,” said Kim Da Sil­va, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Food Share, a food bank that serves Boul­der and Broom­field coun­ties. “Unlike the Great Reces­sion, we’re in a health and eco­nom­ic stress that we’ve nev­er seen before. The scari­est part for us — for food bankers, for peo­ple in the basic needs indus­try — is that we don’t know when we’re going to come out of this.”

Com­mu­ni­ty Food Share dis­trib­uted 1.2 mil­lion pounds of food in April, more than in any month dur­ing the Great Reces­sion or oth­er time in its 40-year his­to­ry. The food bank has hand­ed out more than 1 mil­lion pounds every month since. Dona­tions haven’t kept up with demand, so it has bought 21 truck­loads of food to distribute.

“There is an influx of indi­vid­u­als who nev­er thought they would be in this sit­u­a­tion,” Da Sil­va said.

“The toughest rent checks”

The HEROES Act, the mas­sive coro­n­avirus relief bill passed by the House in May, would send more than $1 tril­lion to state and local gov­ern­ments across the coun­try, refill­ing gov­ern­ment cof­fers that have been drained by declines in tax rev­enue since March. Con­ser­v­a­tives have panned the idea as a bailout for poor­ly run cities and states at the expense of an ever-expand­ing nation­al debt.

South Metro Fire Res­cue, which is pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed by prop­er­ty tax rev­enue, is look­ing at a pos­si­ble short­fall of $3 mil­lion to $16 mil­lion in the next few years, accord­ing to spokesper­son Kristin Eckmann.

“That’s a fire dis­trict that has 85% of its mon­ey spent on per­son­nel,” said Crow, the con­gress­man who rep­re­sents some of the fire department’s juris­dic­tion. “… That means they’re cut­ting fire­fight­er jobs. We just can­not allow that to hap­pen right now.”

In tourist-friend­ly ski com­mu­ni­ties and resort towns, it is sales tax rev­enue that has plum­met­ed. Scott Rob­son is the town man­ag­er in Vail, which derives 40% of its annu­al rev­enue from sales tax­es. He expects his town cof­fers will lose about $19 mil­lion in rev­enue this year, forc­ing defer­rals of cap­i­tal projects, mil­lions of dol­lars in cuts to oper­at­ing expens­es, and a hand­ful of lay­offs for sea­son­al staff.

“What we’ve heard from our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty here is that the next few months are going to be some of the tough­est rent checks that they write in their pro­fes­sion­al careers,” Rob­son said.

Sup­port for small busi­ness­es is a rare area of agree­ment in a divid­ed Con­gress. The Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram, which pro­vides for­giv­able loans to busi­ness­es that keep employ­ees on the pay­roll, is pop­u­lar among both par­ties in the Capi­tol and there is almost uni­ver­sal agree­ment it should be extend­ed this fall.

“It’s hard to predict”

Con­gress is sched­uled to be in ses­sion for only a few weeks between now and the elec­tion, the leg­isla­tive equiv­a­lent of cram­ming before final exams. In Col­orado, this will weigh most heav­i­ly on Sen. Cory Gard­ner, the vul­ner­a­ble Yuma Repub­li­can who is ask­ing vot­ers for six more years in the Senate.

“I have three pri­or­i­ties that must be accom­plished in the next coro­n­avirus response effort,” the sen­a­tor said in a state­ment. “Mak­ing sure that we’re stop­ping the spread and flat­ten­ing the curve, help­ing Col­oradans with the imme­di­ate relief that they need to get through this cri­sis, and get­ting busi­ness­es up and run­ning again.”

A spokes­woman for Gard­ner said he sup­ports more mon­ey for states and local gov­ern­ments, grants to sup­port safe­ty ini­tia­tives at child care cen­ters, relief for senior care providers, more per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for seniors and their care­tak­ers, an exten­sion of PPP and improved test­ing. His cam­paign has pre­vi­ous­ly said he sup­ports extend­ing enhanced unem­ploy­ment payments.

In his lat­est TV ad, Gard­ner touts PPP’s role in sav­ing a Col­orado din­er. Mean­while, his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, John Hick­en­loop­er, has used his lat­est ad to accuse Gard­ner of tak­ing “a vaca­tion” in August with­out pass­ing relief for unem­ployed work­ers and small busi­ness­es, or expand­ing COVID testing.

While the Senate’s August break rou­tine­ly occurs each year, Democ­rats are quick to note it was Gard­ner who said May 20 that it would be “unfath­omable” for the Sen­ate to adjourn with­out pass­ing a relief bill. It did adjourn, and Hick­en­loop­er has let him hear about it ever since.

“I would have thought that with the fall elec­tions approach­ing, and with so many vul­ner­a­ble Repub­li­can sen­a­tors, like Cory Gard­ner, that (Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader) Mitch McConnell would have made a good-faith effort to help peo­ple,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, a Den­ver Demo­c­rat. “I have no idea what he is thinking.”

No Repub­li­can House mem­bers respond­ed to a request for com­ment last week about their relief pri­or­i­ties. When DeGette, Neguse and Crow were asked direct­ly what the odds are that a com­pro­mise is met and ben­e­fits, such as enhanced unem­ploy­ment insur­ance, are extend­ed, none want­ed to wager a guess.

“What is lack­ing in Con­gress right now is the polit­i­cal will to ulti­mate­ly get some­thing done for the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Neguse said. “It’s hard to pre­dict. It’s an open question.”