There has been much braying surrounding Congress accidentally doing its job this week and agreeing to a COVID relief fund. And make no mistake: Any gesture that turns federal monies from a privileged spigot into a public sprinkler is American at its core.

But I have to laugh every time I hear or read that relief will include “stimulus checks” for working stiffs.

What a reprehensible, utterly dishonest term.

Let’s call these checks what they are: welfare checks.

What American, pray tell, tells herself, “Great! I’m getting a $600 Trump check! Now I can look into gold futures!”

No, I suspect that the average American is going to do what I’m going to do: Take that check to the bank, pray it clears, and buy food. Because that’s where this nation is after 10 months of a pandemic: scrounging and scared.

I saw Rand Paul on the Senate floor this morning, explaining how he wasn’t voting for the package because it would send the country deeper into deficit spending, devalue the dollar and ultimately saddle generations with debts their ancestors incurred.

Gosh, ya think so, Rand? So what makes this spending any different from the dollars you were spending before March? You know, when you were beaming about how rosy the stock market and jobs reports looked?

Forget that the Americans who churned those gears were already dog-paddling in a gig economy, turning their own Toyotas into Uber taxis and laptops into bartering tools. We were trillions in debt before we got sick, Rand. Where was that speech on prudence, Senator?

Let’s be clear: COVID-19 is largely an unfortunate tax on the stupid. We have chosen not to wear masks. We have chosen leaders who can’t be bothered with science. We cannot in clear conscience say that we don’t get what’s coming.

But illness eclipses ideology. Disease dwarfs principle. If COVID has reshaped the way we live, it will have to reshape how we spend. And in the face of a pandemic that tightens like a hangman’s noose, we’ll have to rethink what makes a livable wage, what passes for adequate medical care. Suddenly, $15 an hour doesn’t seem like price gouging.

We can’t afford healthy folks deciding healthcare. We can’t afford rich folks deciding spending policy. COVID has made America one bloated, irritable transplant patient, dependent on medication and susceptible to viruses. The next time your libertarian friend rails about getting the government out of his wallet, ask him what he did with the latest welfare check.

It will, after all, buy almost a third of an ounce of gold.