It's been 151 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, and 13 days since the House passed their compromise $2.2 trillion bill, both of which Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. It is 19 days until the most important election in modern times. Which might have a little something to do with Mitch McConnell's sudden reversal in announcing that the Senate will vote on another one of his "skinny" relief bills, one he knows Democrats won't agree to and wouldn't pass muster in the House. Apparently, he discovered upon waking up Tuesday morning that his giggling about 214,000 dead Americans and his own failures was a bad look.
Then there's the possibly still steroid-fueled mass of orange lard in the White House re-upping his demand for "STIMULUS! Go big or go home!!!" That doesn't seem to be the message that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been heeding, or he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have made a deal. They talked again on Wednesday, but seem to be at an impasse because Pelosi's $2.2 trillion needs don't match the White House's somewhat less than $2 trillion (or whatever Trump is imagining) demands, and McConnell won't let anything happen unless he gets his desired outcome of destroying workers' protections in the deal. Yet, somehow, the lack of a deal is Pelosi's fault? That's CNN's take, which she confronted head on.
It's about saving the country. Donate now to help bring back the White House and Senate.
Wolf Blitzer spoke for all the men in the room who have somehow missed the fact that McConnell hasn't just been AWOL in this process, but fighting it when he asked "There are Americans who are being evicted from their homes, they can't pay the rent. Many Americans are waiting in food lines for the first time in their lives. … Can you look them in the eye, Madame Speaker, and explain why you don’t want to accept the president’s latest stimulus offer?"
Big mistake, Wolf. "I hope you'll ask the same question of Republicans about why they don't really want to meet the needs of the American people," Pelosi shot back. "We represent these people, I have for over 30 years represented my constituents. I know what their needs are; I listen to them," she said. "And their needs are not addressed in the president's proposal. So when you say to me, 'Why don't you accept theirs'—why don’t they accept ours?"
But the guys want you to take the deal, Blitzer interrupted to inform her. The guys being Rep. Ro Khanna and Andrew Yang who, well is a person with a penis and a lot of money so must have a say in this even if he isn't in any elected office? Pelosi's answer: “Honest to God, really? I can’t get over it. Because Andrew Yang, he's lovely. Ro Khanna, he's lovely. They’re not negotiating this situation. They have no idea of the particulars."
"Do you have any idea what the difference is between the spending that they have in their bill and we have in our bill?" Pelosi asked, rhetorically. "With all due respect, you really don't know what you're talking about." He doesn't. Khanna might. But there's no reason Yang should even be anywhere in this discussion unless it's in using his money and his influence to push where the problem is—the Republican Senate that has now failed twice to take up a meaningful stimulus that can actually pass Congress and be signed by Trump, letting this crisis extend for all the months that it has.
The reason there aren't more hungry children is because Pelosi and the House managed to get an extension of child nutrition funding—which McConnell and Republicans had been blocking—into the continuing resolution they passed at the end of September to keep government funded. That's not because of Ro Khanna and Andrew Yang. It's not because of the White House. Blitzer, however, stuck to his guns. Again and again and again. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good," Blitzer has said more than once. "It is nowhere near perfect. […] We're not even close to the good," Pelosi finally retorted. "Thank you for your sensitivity to our constituents' needs."
Yes, the expansion of unemployment benefits should be restored. Yes, the stimulus checks need to go out again—frankly they should be increased and they should be sent EVERY MONTH. Yes, there needs to be rent support and student loan support and foreclosure and eviction moratoriums. And more. State and local governments need revenue. Testing and contact tracing still lags everywhere as the virus resurges nationwide. Restaurants need targeted assistance. None of this is not true because Trump is trying to get checks with his name on them out before the election. None of this is not true because Mitch McConnell thinks getting an extremist justice on the Supreme Court.
None of this is Pelosi's fault, not solely. She's certainly not been blameless in the massive government failure to respond to this crisis, primarily in not having learned the lessons of the past. In not recognizing that in that first round of relief, she need to go much, much bigger because the Republican Senate was going to fight a second bite at relief with, well, everything we've seen them fight it with. But at this point, Pelosi and (most) of the House Democrats are the only ones who do really get the scope of what's broken here and what has to be done. Or what minimum can be done to get us through until late January of 2021 when we, hopefully, have a Democratic Senate and White House to start fixing this shit.