The GOP's stimulus disaster starts with the president
With each passing day, Republicans’ approach to extending economic aid looks lazier. From the day President Trump signed the Cares Act into law, politicians had months to craft a follow-up for that bill’s expiration. That time was sorely needed: In Washington, neither intraparty debates nor Democrat-Republican negotiations are quick. But while Democrats settled on their bill by mid-May, more than two months ago, Republicans dawdled right up to the deadline. The GOP’s sloth screams disinterest in the hard work of governing — and that disinterest starts at the top.
The result is now the spectacle of Republicans trying to shame Democrats for blocking something Republicans oppose. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said, “if you have unemployed people that have lost their enhanced unemployment, they need to call their Democrat senators and House members because they are the ones that are standing in the way of having those extended right now.” He left out that said extension would be only for one week, that Democrats opposed the one-week extension because they wanted it to be far longer and that Republicans ultimately want to slash that “enhanced unemployment” — a weekly payment above traditional unemployment coverage that was part of the Cares Act — from $600 to $200 a week. But that’s the pretzel logic the GOP is stuck with because it put off the policy work.
In fact, Republicans haven’t even hashed out the divides in their own caucus. When CBS’s John Dickerson asked about “heartburn” over another round of pandemic relief among some deficit-conscious Republicans, Meadows could only manage a feeble “yeah” before pivoting back to the temporary benefit extension. And when ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to react to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments that 15 to 20 GOP senators still won’t vote for any coronavirus deal, Mnuchin lamely assured viewers that “Mark Meadows and I have been updating the president regularly.”
Had Republicans gotten to work months ago, this disastrous lapse in relief could have been avoided. But when the party’s leader has as much interest in policy details as a dog has in vegetables, why should we expect anything different?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/02/gops-stimulus-disaster-starts-with-president/
= new reply since forum marked as read
