pelosi et al. var jo godt fornøyd med 600. stod der og skrøt av nederlaget. men så kom batman
I’ve never been a fan of the joke about what “the writers” are serving up in this season of the Trump years. It’s just too cloying for me. But last night was definitely a very special Christmas episode, with a plot twist.
The story so far: Congress, after nine months of dithering,
passed a COVID relief bill, attached to a year-end omnibus that funds the government until next September. As practically the only thing Congress has passed all year (seriously, it was bill #29 that has made it through both houses of Congress), lawmakers attached all sorts of other legislation, noncontroversial and otherwise, making it a 5,593-page “what I did in the legislature this year” package. We know this story: it’s good relief, a lifeline for struggling people, but not enough to bridge to a time when mass immunization lifts the crisis and returns the country to normalcy.
Into all this walks Donald Trump, who’d been… well, focused on other things, like overturning the election. Trump dropped a four-minute video last night which combined McCain-style whining about porkbarrel spending, a stroke of populism, and classic vindictiveness.
[…]
The politics, then, argue for higher payments. It was Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who kept them artificially low. Now here comes Trump asking for them to be nearly tripled. It’s amazing that he waited until after losing the election to flash the old-time populism and wedge both parties, but here we are. And then came the moment where Mitch McConnell’s head blew up
like in Scanners.
[…]
There are so many amazing subplots here. Trump can’t stand McConnell for abandoning his overthrow-the-election gambit, so he sticks in the final knife. The threat, by the way, is real: there are only 10 days left in this Congress, and Trump doesn’t have the bill yet (which is being “enrolled,” essentially double-checked for errors). He could “pocket veto” the bill and just not sign it, and in
10 days the clock would run out, and there would be no bill for anyone. The new Congress would have to start all over.
This would be a disastrous scenario—unemployment programs would expire, the eviction moratorium would lift, and more. Already this snafu is delaying the flow of relief. And the only man holding it up is Mitch McConnell. This upends the entire
shift of the multi-racial working class away from the Democratic Party, and re-focuses the spotlight brightly on McConnell. Trump handed the Democrats a total gift here, and if they play it right, the payoff for people—literally—will be incredible.
Trump asks for $2,000 checks, and Democratic leaders call his bluff. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for December 23, 2020.
prospect.org
gi dem kake
But now we see what Biden austerity means in practice. It means meager $600 survival checks instead of $1,200 checks in the same package that pours money into the Pentagon,
gives rich people big new tax breaks and doubles funding for
Congress’s own private health care system. It means inadequate unemployment benefits in a bill that devotes
$6 billion to making business executives’ meals tax deductible and $3 billion to a tax break for landlords.
The New York Times tells us that the president-elect’s move to undercut progressives “gave Democrats confidence to pull back on their demands” and surrender to McConnell.
www.dailyposter.com
www.newyorker.com
