Seriously, are we at all surprised that the Senate Republicans – the same craven crew that rescued Donald Trump from impeachment – are now on the verge of screwing the 30 million jobless folks who’ve been screwed by Trump’s raging pandemic?
Since March, those Americans have been getting $600 a week in emergency jobless benefits, thanks to the first pandemic relief package. But those benefits are set to expire on July 31 because the Republicans – I know this will shock you – are too cruel and dysfunctional to serve citizens in distress. But this is what happens when you elect Trump lackeys and right-wing ideologues who don’t have a clue how to govern.
Indeed, the last jobless checks have already gone out. In the words of Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, “We’re going to have a lot more households that are dangerously close to the lowest levels available to sustain their living.”
During long months of dithering, Senate Republicans “led” by Mitch McConnell had basically hoped (or assumed, having drunk Trump’s Kool-Aid) that the virus crisis would magically cease, that America would come roaring back, and that there’d be no need for another massive federal relief package. No such luck. So now they’re desperately squabbling over what to do, fiddling among themselves as the nation continues to burn.
The jobless benefits issue is only one of many, but it’s a classic GOP metaphor. Thirty million people are hurting, trying to pay their bills, but the Senate Republican response is essentially two-fold: (a) those benefits cost too much money, and (b) those benefits turn people into slackers who don’t wanna work.
Granted, a few Republicans have reportedly embraced reality and recognized that they’ll lose big in November – bye bye, Senate – unless they actually do something for the people in need, and damn the cost. Even Senator John Cornyn sounds woke: “In World War II, while we were fighting Hitler, we weren’t thinking about how much it costs. We were thinking about survival, and that’s my first priority here.”
How enlightened! That’s what House Democrats were saying months ago, when they passed a second relief package that extended the $600-a-week jobless benefits through the end of 2020. A package that has been in limbo ever since – because, as McConnell said the other day, most Republicans “overwhelmingly” oppose that jobless benefits extension.
It’s fascinating how Republicans, who are always happy to hike the budget deficit by giving massive tax breaks to needy corporations and the needy one percent, suddenly become parsimonious and pious about the budget when the average Joe needs a lift. Senator Ron Johnson declares, “I am not going to authorize a dime until I understand what’s we’ve done.” James Lankford, a colleague, says “you have to be careful with other people’s money.” Rand Paul, the lightweight libertarian, says he’s “alarmed” that Republicans are being asked to spend money “we don’t have.” Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania says: “Let’s remember, there’s no free lunch. All of this is either borrowed money or created money and, either way, Americans are going to pay a price for this.”
Gee. All of a sudden they care fervently about the budget deficit – which has grown, under Trump and Senate Republican rule, to a record $864 billion. (As President Obama entered his final year in office, it was $442 billion.) Apparently they can’t grasp the fact that the federal jobless benefits have been injecting billions of dollars into the economy each week; those dollars go to landlords, food stores, retailers, and other business that keep people employed. University of Chicago economist Joseph Vavra points out, “Those unemployment benefits checks are really doing a large job in propping up spending by these unemployed households.”
But alas, a traditional Republican attitude has kicked in. Conservatives in the Senate hate the $600-a-week benefit because they think it turns people into slackers who refuse to work. They’d prefer to let the benefits expire and give everyone a swift kick in the pants. (Never mind the fact that the swollen population of jobless workers far exceeds the number of available jobs.) The GOP’s pull-yourself-up-by-the bootstraps ideology has no relevance to what’s happening right now, but the GOP has been thinking that way for decades. It’s impossible to cure stupid.
Way back in 1935, when the New Deal was first assembling a federal safety net and the Social Security concept was on the table, Republicans on Capitol Hill groused that such protections would coddle the citizenry. As Senator A. Harry Moore of New Jersey warned, Social Security “would take all the romance out of life. We might as well take a child from the nursery, give him a nurse, and protect him from every experience that life affords.” Far more recently, a Nevada congressman named Dean Heller (who lost his Senate seat in 2018) mocked jobless benefits by posing this question: “Is the government now creating hobos?”
Here’s the more urgent question: Why are Senate Republicans so reluctant to do whatever it takes to placate angry, needy voters and save their own jobs – and perhaps help Trump save his?
The answer is obvious: They’re hostage to their own pathologies. And unless they wake up as July winds down, 30 million jobless Americans will pay the price.