Republicans giving out “free money”?
It’s a trap! The only reason the GOP is even considering this is for one reason: November 2020. Trump’s failure to deal with Coronavirus has put Republicans at risk with the elections coming up. This is a hail-Mary pass to make it look like they actually care about America.
The economy needs emergency care - but there are several dangers here. One is that one-off gimmicks will put off the Big Structural Changes we need: paid sick leave, healthcare for all, a living wage, maybe a UBI. Inequality is killing us. The GOP fears de facto socialism because the free markets have failed — again — and they don’t want people to see there are other choices. Warren’s plan for bailout conditions should be a blueprint.
Going forward, the GOP will use the resulting deficits as an excuse to kneecap any efforts by Democrats to enact their agenda, while resisting to the death (our deaths) any tax increases on the rich or big business. (The payroll tax cut Trump favors would hurt Social Security.) If and when the crisis passes, they will go back to trying to eliminate the social safety net. It’s what they do.
The worst possibility is that Republicans will try to buy their way out of responsibility for the latest crisis they have created — and might succeed. Four more years of Trump and a GOP Senate will be a continuing disaster. They are already trying to pivot Trump into the “Hero President” dealing with the crisis — that he set us up for. Beyond that, they may use it as an excuse to tighten their grip on America even more. (See Naomi Klein’s video below, and what Pierce says.)
Democrats are being accused of using the pandemic for partisan advantage; don’t let the GOP get away with it. Remind people over and over the the GOP is finally acknowledging Democratic priorities — providing healthcare, paid sick leave, income support and more. It doesn’t hurt to remind the voters of what real entitlement looks like. People are getting a hard lesson in what GOP rule leads to - don’t waste it!
Don’t frame it as bipartisanship when the GOP is forced to act for the public good — it should not be partisan at all in the first place to have government do the right thing.
The virus doesn’t care which party anyone belongs to — but which party you belong to may have a lot to do with how you cope with it.
Also, Rand Paul is an asshole. Between him and McConnell, can we put Kentucky in quarantine?
Meanwhile, how much posturing and delay is going to happen while details for an economic rescue plan are hammered out? There is a lot of support for some kind of stimulus. Kevin Drum has a suggestion for something that sounds more effective than just mailing out checks to everyone, which he and others find problematic. Here’s what Drum suggests instead:
...Here’s my idea: The IRS (or whoever) puts up a website. It asks for your name, address, and Social Security number. It then asks, under penalty of perjury, for you to swear that you really did lose your job for coronavirus-related reasons. You will be audited about this at the end of the year, but in the meantime we will send you a $500 check every week for 20 weeks. If Congress extends the program, the checks will keep coming. That’s it.
...I’m not saying this is the right idea or even the best idea. All I’m saying is that if we want to give away targeted money quickly, we could do it. All it takes is the will. And this kind of money would be far better than a one-off thousand-dollar check for everyone. A targeted series of checks would provide a level of income security for those who really need it, and because they need it they’d spend it. That also makes this a far superior macroeconomic stimulus.
emphasis added
Read the whole thing for some of the other details.
One of the advantages of acting on Drum’s suggestion is that it can easily be extended past 20 weeks, and projections suggest we are talking about months to deal with the pandemic. While it would take a while for the IRS to get up to speed (Only Trump seems to think websites go up overnight), the IRS has been deliberately starved of resources for decades. It would be nice if they ended up with the ability to audit the people at the top, instead of having to focus on the easy targets of people at the bottom.
Naomi Klein has explained how Disaster Capitalism exploits emergencies through the Shock Doctrine to push through measures no one would allow under other circumstances. How about we practice some Disaster Socialism instead, where we actually come out of a crisis better off? Klein spells it out in 9 minutes here.
Bonus Video: John Oliver turns in a bravura performance working without an audience to continue his efforts to lay out what is happening with the U.S. efforts on coronavirus. Twenty Two minutes of hard humor to help the facts go down. Especially the part starting at 20 minutes...