The same Senate Republicans who voted for inflating the national debt by trillions to pass their tax giveaway to the rich are suddenly balking at the price tag of the relief package to help struggling Americans through tough coronavirus-related times.
Predictably, it's anything but principled. Rather, the GOP disarray hobbling the relief bill is the clearest signal yet that Senate Republicans are preparing for a post-Trump era. Where they stand depends on where they sit. Those up for reelection are still making nice with Trump, but for others, the wicked brew of future ambition combined with muscle memory has them reacquainting themselves with the age-old arguments they always make when they don't control the White House.
“The White House is trying to solve bad polling by agreeing to indefensibly bad debt," Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said in lengthy statement. "This proposal is not targeted to fix precise problems — it’s about Democrats and Trumpers competing to outspend each other." Sasse just won the GOP primary in his state with the backing of Trump. Nice turn of the knife there.
Yet neither Sasse nor any other Senate Republican even blinked just months ago in March when they unanimously passed the initial $2 trillion CARES Act pieced together by Trump's negotiators. But now that Trump has clearly blown the entire national response and his polling has plummeted, it's a brave new world for Sasse and the gang.
On the bright side, the GOP's sheer incapacity to rally around core principles that would normally be driven by the White House is a sure sign that Trump is losing his grip on the party. But naturally it isn't making them better lawmakers, it's only making them more self-interested. Republicans like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri are both eyeing an Oval Office bid themselves, notes The Washington Post's Paul Kane. Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is suddenly itching to burnish his fiscal hawk cred.
The born-again fiscal conservative caucus is even floating the concept of a "skinny COVID-19" relief measure, which would have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in stitches if so many Americans weren't suffering so badly.
"I want the review of the fact that they put $2 trillion onto the national debt to give a tax break to the wealthy, 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent,” Pelosi told reporters Friday. On Monday, she told MSNBC: "There are trillions of dollars being used by the Fed and our government to bolster the stock market... Why can't we spend trillions of dollars to bolster the middle class?"
We all knew this GOP reversion to professed principles they never really cared about was coming, it just may have arrived sooner than we thought.
