Coop Scoop: The Great Shrinking Relief Bill Edition

Congress is spectacularly failing.

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December 16, 2020 Issue #52 From Marc Cooper

If you have the sensation that the United States Congress has basically abdicated any meaningful role in governing for the people of the United States you are dead on.

The news today percolates about both parties getting ever closer to whatever you want to call it: A stimulus bill, a Covid-relief bill, an emergency funding bill and so on.

I call it a pathetic handout — from both parties.

We should give Democrats some credit if not much. The democratic House did pass a comprehensive $3.4 trillion bill many months to ago, only to be summarily interred by Mitch McConnell in the Senate.

Months went by with Republicans doing nothing and then low-balling Democrats who gritted their teeth and rejected even the minimal aid, holding out for better terms.

The logjam seemed permanent until a “gang” of very conservative Democrats led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin teamed up with the permanently “concerned” Maine Republican Susan Collins who cosplays the role of “moderate” Republican (though she votes with Trump almost all the time). Manchin, by the way, is the Democrat who said it was a “bad idea” when Trump himself proposed direct cash relief checks some months ago. Ugh.

And, Voila! To paroxysms of joy, the media could finally celebrate that which it always wishes and lobbies for, the golden fleece of “a bi-partisan agreement.” Whoopdeedo! Who cares what’s really in it? It’s bi-partisan so it must be nifty. It was termed no less than a “Christmas Miracle.” Roll over, Baghdad Bob!

The Christmas Miracle

While the sordid details of this patched together mongrel measure, coming in at around $900b, are yet to be finalized, it’s expected that sometime today, tomorrow or Friday (the last day of this session!), the two sides will have agreed on the size of the eye dropper that will be used to dispense the funding and the deets will become public, Get out your electron microscopes to read the fine print that will contain all the corporate giveaways.

The Republicans have been outright criminals in blocking any significant relief to a diseased and financially strapped public. You don’t need to have been a reader of this newsletter over the last year to get that. More than 8 million additional people have been thrust into poverty during the pandemic, hunger is sharply on the rise, expanded unemployment support ends for 12 million in exactly 11 days, 40% of Americans do not have $400 cash in savings, half the country’s renters are in arrears and owe an average of $5400 just when the eviction moratorium ends in 15 more days. Twenty million remain effectively unemployed. Three hundred thousand families have lost someone in this Trump plague. State and local governments are running on fumes at the precise moment that their hospital systems are collapsing and they must handle vaccine administration on their own. Just today 5,000 body bags and 60 refrigerated morgue trucks were sent to Southern California to stack up the dead.

But..but.. the Down Jones has crossed 30,000! (Too bad that the top 10% own about 90% of all stocks and their holdings average just under a million bucks. That’s the average!).

The above can serve as the predicate for wholesale indictment of the now rogue Republican Party and its capo Mitch McConnell. Yet, the Democrats, while not the primary movers of this deal, still must stand as un-indicted co-conspirators as they have obviously failed, rather dramatically, in negotiating a better deal.

The ill-fated HEROES Act that the House Democrats passed back in May, was fairly robust. It totaled $3.4 trillion, it would have given a healthy $1.13 trillion to states and local government, and almost a billion for extending enhanced unemployment and a one time $1200 check to everybody (though some Dems like Bernie wanted ongoing cash payments for 6 months or a year).

What we are apparently winding up with is an anemic bill that, in broad strokes, is about 30% of what the Democrats actually wanted. The figure for state relief might get peeled off into a separate bill but it looks like no more than $160b will be allocated, less than a third of what most think is necessary.

I recognize the difficulty the Democrats have in not holding a Senate majority and having to negotiate with the Republican trolls. But they have done a piss poor job. They did not raise the stakes high enough politically to force a better deal. Just exactly where was the multi-million dollar public messaging buy from Dems over the last months to pressure the Republicans. I mean, this is not a sectorial or narrow interest group issue. This is about the solvency of the 50 states and its 330 million inhabitants (at least 3/4 of them).

That raises the question of what pressure has the American people brought to bear on both these parties to get them to pass what is needed. I am sure some efforts have been made but nothing that got much notice or traction.

For those of you who might have tired hearing me knock on week after week about the importance of building on-the-ground local and national social movements, you can now see the consequences of not having them, or them being too weak, or too closely in the pocket of the Democratic leadership.

Don’t you think it odd that a few thousand assholes, morons, Trumpies, and neo-fascists have no problem mobilizing, rallying, getting media coverage, building new social media, and (stupidly) giving $250m to Trump after he lost (!), when a couple of hundred million citizens suffering during this pandemic and recession are quiet? Shall we say, invisible? These are the consequences of the Democratic Leadership being disengaged from average people and average people thinking it is too much work to engage with their neighbors.

The pressure to pass a real, robust relief bill should be today an enormous tidal wave of public clamoring instead of a small ripple or two among those who actually follow the news and can decipher its anodyne language.

As it stands at this hour, and things can change quickly as the two parties divvy up the pie, even the paltry $900b total cost is bogus. From what expert observers can figure out, far less half of this figure is “new money.” the rest of it being reshuffled and renamed and coming out of still unspent funds from the CARES bill passed at the onset of the pandemic. Oh, might I mention in this “miracle” package we are not sure how much if anything states will get. Nor do we quite know yet if the Republican demand that businesses be exempt from COVID-related liability lawsuits will stand. I will bet that it will. And, of course as can be expected in any bi-partisan miracle, defense contractors are being given special aid and contract provisions to make life easier for them (after all our new proposed Democratic Secretary of Defense) kept a seat warm on the board of Raytheon.

And what about the most important thing of all for tens of millions of Americans: immediate cash relief. The Republicans stuck for months to zeroing that out. The latest news is that the miracle package might now grant ONE check of about $600 or $700 to Americans and ciao! These bastards in Congress couldn’t even get it up to the minimal figure of $1200, though that might still happen (certainly that would be in return to further cuts to state funding.

Under a current conditions, $1200 might be a god-send for a month or so for the neediest. Something like $600 would border on an insult. Though, the average cost of plain and simple cremation in the U.S. is also about $600 so everything might jibe neatly for some.

As to unemployment insurance: Well, Republicans hate slackers, and if your spouse died and you got laid off, they sure would not want you to enjoy anything close to economic security. You’d probably laze around all day and toy with Playstation and scarf Fritos if you’re out of work and unemployment payments met your minimal needs.

Consequently, the one time $600 a week extra unemployment payment offered earlier in the year was cut to $300 and before it runs out in 11 days, our congressional overloads are granting us the same paltry $300 going forward and only forward until March. As everybody knows our national crisis will be over by then and we will once again be Number One in the world. A Shining City On The Hill.

More gruesome details on this package will come out today or tomorrow. Whatever they are, they are likely to not change the overall shape of this mess.

Joe Biden has put on a good face calling it merely a “down payment” on a bigger package after he is elected and…maybe…he can get something through again. LeadingDem consultants this week opined that at best Biden will have more shot and that will be it. And even that one new infusion is not guaranteed.

If Dems win those two Georgia seats in three weeks he will have a one vote Senate majority with VP Harris casting that one vote. That does not account for the conservative Democratic senators — 4 or 5 of them that can kill anything they want by turning thumbs down. Along with a delegation of conservative House Democrats who can spoil the 3 or 4 seat majority the party currently has in the lower chamber when they get chicken-hearted.

Hey, do not despair! There is some good news for ten percent of you: the DJIA fell a tad today but is still over 30,000 And the S&P 500 went up a few points and might soon cross the 4,000 mark. Hooray!

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