Another week, another political piece asking whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will do the right thing (or will in fact do anything) as he singlehandedly blocks most of the federal government from addressing any of the many problems that polls indicate the actual voting public wants to see addressed. This week: Will Mitch McConnell allow the Senate to do anything, asks Politico, about prescription drug prices?
The answers to the three questions above are no, probably not, and no, and to the reporter’s credit (or perhaps merely because McConnell has so thoroughly normalized party-over-values rule) the piece thoroughly explains that Mitch does not intend to do a damn thing about reining in prescription drug prices because, and this is explicit, he sees no political advantage for his party in doing so. House Democrats just passed an expansive prescription drug bill, which McConnell intends to block all action on to prevent Democrats from succeeding in any legislation on any front, but Republican senators are expressing alarm that the general public is genuinely furious at the problem and that it could be dangerous while some face 2020 reelection battles to truly tell the public to pound sand on this one.
That said, Republican senators are divided in what they themselves are willing to support (see: drug company money, and lots and lots of it) and that scuttles the whole thing. No, the man now referred to as the Grim Reaper of the Senate, Moscow Mitch, is not going to give even a passing glance at the notion of helping his Kentucky constituents or anyone else if there is a danger of needing to court Democratic support, so that's right out. Done. Dead. Oh, and it's socialism now, so stop asking.
A somewhat odd detail in this particular version of the "Will Mitch McConnell at some point do his damn job" story is that Donald Trump himself has gotten the prescription drug bee in his bonnet, almost certainly because he was watching his TV, and has decided he wants his administration to be the one that grants the public this particular popular demand. Will Trump lean on McConnell to allow a bill to pass, then?
This sounds like a reasonable question, until we remember the fundamental rule of the Donald White House: Donald Don't Really Give A Damn.
Trump wants to be able to brag on the campaign trail that he "solved" escalating prescription drug prices, but he does not actually care what "solved" means. He is unfamiliar with any of the particulars of any of the proposals, and will at no point read any of them. Donald Trump will care deeply about prescription drug prices until something else distracts him, like a new heroic dog or Rudy Giuliani announcing that Actually the nation of Russia does not exist but is a figment of the Democratic National Committee's imagination. Then Donald will care about that other thing, will lose interest in this one, and it will all end with Donald declaring at future rallies that he was victorious and drugs are free now but the "media" isn't telling you that, and so on, and so forth.
We keep getting these stories, week after week, and the answers remain the same. The odds that Mitch McConnell, the man who has inflicted more injuries on American democracy than anyone else in the past 50 years, will lift a single finger to accomplish anything unless it is to the direct benefit of the Republican Party and/or does an explicit injury to the opposition remain at zero. Zero. The only governance that the Republican-controlled Senate has done under McConnell has been partisan sabotage. From the courts to tax policy, there has been no act to come from McConnell that has not been tailored, specifically, to allowing Republicanism to cling to power slightly longer than its demographics suggest it can.
Like Trump, McConnell will allow his branch of government to act only if there is something in it for McConnell. He will never do otherwise. So stop asking.