How Trump and McConnell are prolonging our economic nightmare
"Fox Host Puts Kellyanne Conway In The Hot Seat Over Trump's COVID-19 Mistruths"
In that Conway puts all the blame for the stimulus stalemate on the Democrats while it's much more likely McConnell and his mates have their fingers in the dam so Trump can occupy the stage with some late-season executive hurrahs.
Present Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Capitol Hill in March. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Opinion by Paul Waldman Columnist July 18, 2020 at 2:41 a.m. GMT+10
Do Republicans even want to help the American economy through this crisis?
It seems like a crazy question to ask, but given what’s happening right now, it’s a hard one to avoid. Even as they face an electoral catastrophe that might be mitigated by easing America’s economic pain, they seem more interested in getting a couple of small ideological victories than in actually doing what’s necessary to prop up the economy.
We can safely say that President Trump, due to a combination of ignorance and his own peculiar personality flaws, simply doesn’t understand what the country needs. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is no fool. So his actions may seem even less sensible.
There is, however, one clear explanation for what he’s doing: He has already given up on the idea of Trump being reelected, and he’s planning for the future.
Let’s begin with the horror of the moment. Last week another 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance; the total number who are either getting UI or waiting for it is over 36 million .. https://www.epi.org/blog/joblessness-remains-at-historic-levels-the-extra-600-in-ui-benefits-expires-next-week-congress-must-extend-it/ , or one in five American workers. Yet the enhanced unemployment benefits included in the Cares Act rescue package, which provided an extra $600 a week and have been a lifeline for millions, are set to expire at the end of the month.
Yet one gets no sense of urgency from Republicans about passing a new rescue bill. Trump has become convinced .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/07/16/payroll-tax-cut-trump-coronavirus/?itid=lk_inline_manual_13 .. that the only important thing to do is a payroll tax cut, which, as a way of stimulating the economy is weak, to say the least. It would give more of its benefits to higher-income people, who pay more than those with modest incomes. It would give nothing to the tens of millions of unemployed Americans. And it would weaken the Social Security and Medicare trust funds (which Republicans probably don’t mind).
That’s part of the long Republican effort to bar people who are injured or abused from access to the courts. But as an economic stimulus, it’s utterly useless.
Nor is McConnell showing any particular urgency about passing a bill at all. A source who was present on a conference call of Senate Democrats on Tuesday tells me that Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) told his colleagues that he has gotten no outreach from McConnell on the bill.
That doesn’t mean we might not get some kind of agreement eventually. But it will probably take until after the enhanced UI benefits expire, delivering a vicious blow to the economy at the worst possible time.
That’s not to mention the fact that we can’t have an economic recovery until we get the pandemic under control. Yet both the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are acting as though they did their best to stop the pandemic and now there’s nothing more to do, so they’re giving up.
But McConnell knows what’s happening. He has surely looked around and realized that with the pandemic surging, there is simply no way the economy is going to come roaring back before November. He’s seen the polls showing Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 10 points or more. He knows that the political environment grows less favorable .. https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/house-overview/house-rating-changes-20-races-move-towards-democrats .. to the GOP by the day. He understands that the odds his party will retain control of the Senate are probably 50-50 at best.
So from where he sits, the best outcome now may be to use the next stimulus package to win some minor ideological victories, but not allow it to be substantial enough to set the stage for a genuine recovery. That way, if and when Biden becomes president in 2021, the situation will be no less dire than it is now — and maybe more so.
And the worse things are in the country at that point, the better it is for Republicans. Just as they did when Barack Obama was president, they can blame Democrats for their own mistakes, then force austerity measures that sabotage the economy and slow the recovery.
If you were a Republican and you thought that Trump was doomed no matter what, this might be your best-case scenario.
Of course, to think that you’d have to be utterly amoral — indifferent to the country’s suffering if it could be weaponized for some political advantage. In other words, you’d have to be Mitch McConnell.
And that’s why the next stimulus will be completely inadequate to the crisis we face. Combine Trump’s catastrophic incompetence with McConnell’s nihilism, and this is what you get.
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