It's been 144 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. It's been less than 24 hours since Donald Trump called off negotiations attempting to craft a bill that could pass before the election, by tweet. It's been even fewer hours since Trump had another tweet storm in which he called negotiations back on, maybe? There seems to be countervailing forces at work on Trump, and one is particularly malevolent: Mitch McConnell.
According to the sources to the Washington Post McConnell squashed the talks by telling Trump that Pelosi was just "stringing him along." Because of course nothing would work better on Trump than telling him a powerful woman was trying to make a fool out of him. McConnell also said any deal she cut with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin would get enough Republican support to pass in the Senate. Meaning McConnell would use that excuse to refuse to bring it to the floor. You can see McConnell at work in Trump's brain—he tweeted that he asked McConnell "not to delay, but to instead focus full time on approving my outstanding nominee to the United States Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett." Which is McConnell's own, sole agenda. It's apparently that easy to manipulate a steroid-addled Trump, which is not a calming thought.
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The other thing that motivates Trump, though, is the stock market. And it started to plunge the moment his tweet calling off negotiations hit. Which is probably why within a few hours after tweeting the talks off, Trump started in calling them back on. It started with a one-word exclamation—"True!"—to a CNBC headline: "Fed Chair Powell calls for more help from Congress, says there's a low risk of 'overdoing it'." The whiplash continued.
Within another few hours, he was telling his administration to work with Democrats on more stimulus bills. He called on Congress to "IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business." Then he followed up with "If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy?" He tagged chief of staff Mark Meadows, McConnell, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer in that one.
The confusion continued Wednesday. Meadows told reporters that "The stimulus negotiations are off," apparently at about the same time that Mnuchin was on the phone with Pelosi. Her deputy chief of staff confirmed she and Mnuchin talked again, and that he "inquired about a standalone airlines bill," and that the "Speaker reminded him that Republicans blocked that bill on Friday & asked him to review the […] bill so that they could have an informed conversation." Burn.
So Trump's 'roid-fueled policy-making by tweet is sowing confusion everywhere. McConnell has already indicated that he's not planning to do anything other than jam another unqualified, extremely controversial Supreme Court nominee down the nation's throat before the election, and the economy is nearing a dangerous "tipping point" without further stimulus, and soon.
That's what Karen Dynan, a Harvard economist and Treasury Department official during the Obama administration, told The New York Times. "The risk to waiting is that we may find ourselves in a place where we’re unable to turn back, we'll hit a tipping point." That reiterates the point that Federal Reserve Chairman Powell made earlier Tuesday. "Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses," he said. "Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth."
"The economy needs another round of fiscal support with aid to households, small and midsized firms and states," R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush told the Times. "Failing to act will have real economic consequences."
It seems like that's McConnell's actual plan. He's reading the polls like everyone else and is as aware as anyone that Republicans are likely to lose not just the White House, but the Senate. So he can absolutely wreck the economy for President Joe Biden, and then further cripple him in his first year in his efforts to fix anything by stacking the Supreme Court entirely against him. The people of America are just his collateral damage.
