Just flipped over to MSNBC for a hot minute because game show network running the god awful Match Game reruns from the 70s.
She had Senator Mike Braun (R-Indiana) on. She asked a pretty basic question about whether Mike thought this crisis exposed the holes in the social safety net.
I usually am doing something else when MSBC is on (I take care of mom fulltime, she is 80 and has dementia, but she hates the Match Game while liking the game show network otherwise). But his response caused me to look up from what I was doing.
He agreed with Katy, it has exposed the problems with the social safety net. I was shocked to hear a Republican agree, it caught my attention. I had a millisecond of hope.
Then, he kept talking. He began opining about Social Security and Medicare, and how its been a problem for years and no one has had the political will to do anything about it. He couched it in the usual Republican euphemisms for cutting benefits of both programs and even launched into the “solvency issue”.
My millisecond of hope was dashed about as fast as I figured it would be. In the end, Katy Tur’s expression said it all.
I needed a good laugh, and the look of confused disgust on Katy’s face provided it. I mean it is the only appropriate response.
But Seriously though
Republicans are not good-faith actors.
Republicans are going to pursue their agenda through this crisis. Democrats have to understand this. I fear it is too late since they have given everything Republicans wanted in response to this crisis already while getting very little of what wanted along the way.
I hope whatever this big bill is today can get through, I just don’t see it happening. Republicans drafted the first BIG bills (3 and 3.5 or whatever) and they will bank on that being the credit they need. Now they will block bills with stuff we want because they can and it will make us look bad. They used the early fright to get the megacorp money shovel set up with our acquiessence, now the shock level is down we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get a tiny fraction of what we want for the American people.
Giving Republicans everything they wanted by letting them draft those bills was insane. I am hope I am wrong, and the things needing to pass in this next house bill somehow passes in the Senate, but I very seriously doubt it. Republicans goal is to destroy governing capacity, it is the root of their ideology. this crisis prevents an opportunity for them to make big gains on that front. And by giving them the political cover by letting them draft the first big bills without much of what we wanted while they got everything they wanted, we have given them political cover.