by N. Peter Kramer
Friday March 27, President Trump signs a roughly $2trillion stimulus package into law, the largest relief package in US history to extend aid to many struggling Americans through direct payments and expanded unemployment insurance. The package provides loans and grants to businesses, augments drained state coffers and sends additional resources to sapped health-care providers. The measure had overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.
Earlier in the week the package passed the Senate 96-0 votes but only after a hold-up of several days’ contagion by the Senate Minority Leader, the Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer from New York. When the US most needs bipartisan cooperation, Democrats added to the economic uncertainty by putting their partisan interest above the needs of the country. When much of the US is quarantined at home, the public is so panicked there is a run on toilet paper, the country desperately wants reassurance, the Democrats Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, decided, under pressure from the left, to take a bipartisan bill as a political hostage.
The hold-up started with a tweet of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leader of the ‘socialist’ Democrats in the House. It says, ‘Mitch McConnell & the GOP are pushing a crony capitalists slush fund for friends and donors.’ Chuck Schumer then blocked the Senate from even debating the bill that his fellow Democrat senators co-wrote with their Republican colleagues. The reason for Schumer’s behaviour, while he expressed two days before ‘delight and surprise’ at the ‘bipartisan cooperation’, is that he fears the challenge of the in N.Y. very popular Ocasio-Cortez for his N.Y. senate seat in a 2022 primary.
Schumer suddenly claimed that there wasn’t enough ‘transparency’ in the bill’s replenishment for the Exchange Stabilization Fund, but the rules are essentially the same as they have been since more than 15 years. Democratic cynicism was further exposed when Nancy Pelosi released her own bill. And then the Democrats showed their real reason for blocking the bill in the Senate. The Democrat House Majority Whip James Clyburn was heard advising Democrats to view the Coronavirus crisis as a ‘tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision’. Pelosi’s bill followed, including an ideological wish list that has nothing to do with the crisis: same-day voter registration, privileges for the unions and a mishmash of discretionary spending items. She asked also $25million for the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
At the end, a bipartisan deal was the result, under pressure of the incredibly fast-increasing coronavirus crisis. And yes, don’t worry, the $25million for the Kennedy Center is in it. A present for Nancy Pelosi’s 80th birthday last Friday?
