Mitch McConnell's Mission of Misery

[Zorro]

Why Senate Republicans won’t help Americans in need.

By Paul Krugman

I keep seeing news reports saying that the Trump administration is “pivoting” on economic stimulus. But Donald Trump has been reversing positions so frequently that it looks less like a series of pivots than like a tailspin.

Over the course of just a week he went from demanding big stimulus, to calling off negotiations, to demanding big stimulus again, to calling for a small-scale deal using already allocated funds.

It would be funny if the human consequences weren’t so terrible. At this point the best guess is that for the next three-plus months — that is, until President Joe Biden takes office (highly likely, though not certain) with a Democratic Senate (more likely than not, but definitely not a sure thing) — there will be little or no aid for the millions of families, thousands of businesses and many state and local governments on the brink of disaster.

But why isn’t America getting the pandemic relief it so obviously needs?

It’s easy to blame Trump, who has managed to spend four years in office without learning anything about policy and has surrounded himself with officials chosen for slavish personal loyalty rather than expertise. As a recent article in Politico put it: “Never mind the A Team. At this point, even the B Team would represent a significant upgrade.”

But even if Trump had any idea what he was doing, he would be paralyzed by the opposition of many, probably most Senate Republicans to any serious deal. They’re willing to cover for Trump’s unprecedented corruption; they’re apparently unbothered by his fondness for foreign dictators. But spending money to help Americans in distress? That’s where they draw the line.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/opinion/mitch-mcconnell-covid-stimulus.html