Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), from all appearances, has only two political goals: confirming right-wing judges and holding the majority. He made good on the first, but he is in danger of blowing the second.
The Washington Post reports that McConnell “on Tuesday blocked consideration of a House bill that would deliver $2,000 stimulus payments to most Americans—spurning a request by President Trump even as more Senate Republicans voiced support for the dramatically larger checks.”
Later on Tuesday, McConnell set up votes on a bill for the $2,000 checks that included a commission on (nonexistent) voting fraud and total repeal of the exemption for Internet companies from material others post. (The latter, ironically, might knock the current president off social media.) This was plainly a ploy to give Republican cover to vote for a bill with the $2,000 that would never pass.
So far, a flock of Republican senators including Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri and both Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia say they want to vote for the larger stimulus checks. McConnell will not let them.
The question for Loeffler and Perdue is twofold. Why have they opposed any stimulus bill for nine months? They seem to acknowledge they were wrong, and people are suffering and need help.
It is not clear why voters should re-elect lawmakers who could not see the obvious need for payments, so it is fair to also ask them: Since everyone agrees $2,000 is a good idea, wouldn’t it be better to have a Democratic majority, which has pleaded for larger checks and is ready to vote for them immediately?
I rarely quote Trump without intent to denounce him, but here he is right: “Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2,000 payments ASAP,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH!”
Yet again, Republicans have demonstrated (as they did in attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act) their remarkable preference for staking their political lives on measures that are both bad policy and terrible politics.
It is far from clear who McConnell thinks he is protecting by refusing a simple up-or-down vote. His right-wing members who still do not want to give Americans any money? The right-wing activists who have not cared about deficits for four years?
Whatever his rationale and whatever Trump’s motives (revenge? hunger for approval?), Republicans have now made clear which party cares about suffering Americans.
Moreover, Trump and other Republicans pushing for larger checks have jettisoned any complaint about the incoming Biden administration’s spending proposals.