After embarrassing itself for four months by its failure to pass an economic stimulus bill, the Senate finally did the right thing this week, or at least the best thing one could hope for in an election year. It gave up.

Instead, the Senate quickly passed a stand-alone bill, offered by Maine Republican Susan Collins and Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed, to extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks. As little as the 1.2 million jobless Americans who have already used up their basic 26 weeks of coverage relished the spectacle of senators playing politics with the necessities of life, they must have appreciated a bill that puts food on the table and pays the rent. The Collins-Reed proposal is no1t the bill that that would have helped the unemployed most, but it is the best bill that could have been passed given the politics in Washington. Even now, some House members are talking about voting against it unless further tax cuts for the wealthy are added.

The number of workers who’ve lost their jobs and exhausted their unemployment benefits is staggering. In December, 300,000 used up the last of their basic 26 weeks, the most ever in one month, according to the Labor Department. In Maine, some 10,000 ran out of benefits before the end of 2001 without finding another job. The length of the benefit is limited to encourage the unemployed to actively look for work, but, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noted recently, this time “there just are no jobs out there.”

The numbers are high in part because of the recession and the post-Sept. 11 economic fallout. The other part is that in past recessions Congress has acted swiftly to extend benefits. Only in this recession did the Senate decide there were larger issues than helping people in genuine need. The sad fact is that extending unemployment benefits should have been a routine matter rather than something that had to be fought for, even as the persistence of Sens. Collins and Reed ” was laudable.

Although there are signs the economy is improving, job creation usually lags other indicators by several months, so the drain on the Treasury is necessary but also likely to be short-lived. The help to the unemployed is minimal, but it is immediate and it aids the economy by putting much-needed cash back into circulation. It is minimal stimulus without the embarrassment.