Even Sen. Mitch McConnell, the most dangerous man in America because he's the one letting Donald Trump literally get away with murder, has an Achilles heel: the U.S. Postal Service. The unfortunate reality for McConnell, and for all Republicans, is that people notice when they don't get the mail they are depending on. When they don't receive their medicine or their Social Security checks, or when their customers call them complaining that they never received ordered goods, or their children and grandchildren don't receive the birthday cards they sent. When those people live in rural America, which is disproportionately represented by Republicans, not getting the mail is an even bigger issue—one that lawmakers are probably getting an earful about now that they're back in their home states.
Which explains McConnell readying a bill to provide $10 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service (even while his dimmest bulb, Sen. Ron Johnson, plans a hearing centered around the Postal Service not needing any additional funding). McConnell plans to bring up an even "skinnier" coronavirus relief bill, which includes the Postal Service money, to try to pressure the House into acting on and accepting his unacceptable bill. He's trying to gloss over the fact that he has ignored the House-passed HEROES Act for 13 weeks, letting the millions of struggling Americans fall off a cliff. So he's going to bring up an even skimpier version of his HEALS Act, which is as unacceptable now as it was two weeks ago.
The cornerstone of his bill apparently remains liability protections for any business owner or school that opens prematurely, resulting in infection and/or death of customers or employees. It also has $300 in boosted weekly unemployment benefits until Dec. 27. The Democrats are sticking to $600/week for the duration of the crisis, which is not going to end with the calendar year. McConnell's bill also will reportedly have more for the Paycheck Protection Program, the troubled small business loan program, despite the fact that the Federal Reserve is sitting on $454 billion from March that never got used because the big business that it was intended for had other ways to raise it. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) That money should be repurposed in the form of grants to small businesses.
While McConnell insists that the Postal Service will be "just fine," clearly he feels the need to act and try to get ahead of the narrative that Republicans are abusing the institution in order to subvert the election. Literally, that's the narrative he's trying to extinguish. “We're going to make sure that the ability to function going into the election is not adversely affected," he said Monday. Of course he's going to try to leverage this crisis against House Speaker Pelosi. That's what he does. But $10 billion in funding the post office isn't enough to answer the needs of tens of millions of struggling Americans.
It's not enough to fund the counties and towns and cities and states that have seen revenues crater in the past six months. It's not enough to ensure that the November election can be conducted safely and efficiently. It seems likelier all the time that that's what McConnell is colluding with Trump to prevent—a fair 2020 election. The good news is his Republican senators are feeling pressure, forcing him to act.
