The negotiations on the Coroanvirus Stimulus bill are revealing something that has characterized our politics for decades, ensuring the constant pendulum swing of government from conservative to, well, less so.
When the GOP hunkered down to craft their response, the priorities were very clear. It was a corporate windfall, with half a trillion in a slush fund that Sec. Mnuchin would be free to dole out any way he saw fit, no oversight of any kind, and a six month cone of silence before where the money went could be revealed to protect the stock price of the bailed out companies. Very reminiscent of the 3 page bill Paulson initially offered up to deal with the financial crisis of 2008. Give me an unheard of amount of money and I’ll take care of it. Trump assured us yesterday that he would be the oversight mechanism. He would look out for us.
In short, Covid-19 could be an opportunity! Something to take advantage of to corral an even larger percentage of the United States economy.
The pushback was assured and it came swiftly, and rightly so, particulary because of the context of the rich just getting a huge tax windfall and in response to the current crisis the Fed releasing $1.5 trillion in 0% interest loans to businesses great and small. The public was not in the mood to give a lifeline to the very companies that failed to prepare with that tax windfall, preferring to line executive and stockholders pockets with buyback of stocks instead. The GOP offering was myopic and a non-starter and never made it beyond a procedural vote. McConnell bailed, then railed from the podium, but it was all to no avail. The workers had largely been ignored in the first iteration, and the Democrats would come sweeping in to the rescue.
They did.
The House with Leader Pelosi’s guidance put together a bill that was worker-centric, but they couldn’t help going after a few of their sacred cows, either. The airlines would be bailed out, but at the price of reducing emmissions by half by 2050. They increased the limitations on executive pay and stock buybacks, but went a step further still and introduced measures that would limit or eliminate lobbying by companies benefitting from the bailouts. These additional clauses were an attempt to have large corporations pay a cost for the largesse the Fed was about to shower upon them, but there were so many of these codicils to the bill that it was easy for conservatives to lock onto them and paint the bill as a socialist takeover, a coup.
There is some truth to this. Both parties see this as an opportunity to advance what is important to them, and both will take it too far to their detriment. No one supports folks that take advantage of a crisis. It even gets criminalized on the micro level, as Attorney General Barr made very clear from the podium yesterday. Don’t hoard, don’t price gouge. We’ll get ya!
But every time one of the parties has a slight advantage, they overestimate the strength of that advantage. It is commonly referred to as a “mandate”, which is the canard that by the strength of getting elected, any god damned thing they come up with is supported by the majority of the public. With this “get out of jail free card” they will wildly overstep the desires of the American public. This is seen over and over again as administrations pursue goals that publc opinion polls reject, at times in huge numbers. This is such a staple of American politics that when W. won by losing the popular vote, he still claimed his election as a “mandate” from the American public. Factually hilarious, but not questioned at all. Trump did the same thing, and has acted on it, gutting huge swaths of government, filling leadership roles with people intentionally chosen to crush the departments that they have been put in charge of. EPA, Education, Food and Drug, even National Security all actively pursuing policies counter to the desires of the American public as a whole. They are not in favor of dumping coal sludge into the water system. They are not in favor of defunding public education. They are not in favor of foreign interference in our elections. They are not in favor of suppressing witnesses and shielding documents. Those polls are not close.
I am firmly on the side of the Democratic version of what it looks like to get government help in a disaster, but both sides would be wise to look at legislation in times of national crisis as a very sacred duty. Every effort should be made to avoid any hint of partisan advantage, any hint of politics as usual. This is the time to rise above the pettiness. McConnell humiliated himself in his addresses in the Senate, raging at the Democrats for calling out a very cynical attempt to direct cash to where it always goes in America, the folks that already have it.
Minority Leader Shumer was adamant about the changes that had to be made, but to his credit he didn’t rise to meet Mitch’s partisanship. His time at the podium was a defense of what the Democrats were trying to prioritize with a minimum of gunshots across the bow of the GOP majority. In the past he has been just as guilty as anyone else of partisan screeds, but this time the Republicans had stumbled so badly it didn’t really require much of an admonition. They had self-destructed. They had spent their political capital with there first shot, and it missed.
It’s 1 o’clock EST and they haven’t come to agreement yet, but they are close, they say, and the bill has swung wildly to the left, which seems to more closely reflect the desires of the public. The stock market is moving up in response to the prospect of government taking an action and forming a strategy, a path to follow to resurrection.
Speaking of the market, I don’t think it is coincidence that the press conferences for the Coronavirus Response Team were moved from midday to 6pm. Trump’s presence in these meetings, and almost every time he simply takes a microphone, tends to send the market into a spiral. By moving the pressers to 6pm, the market has an overnight to temper its response to the idiocy that they have been exposed to. As the prospect of a Senate deal becomes more likely the markets are responding. When Trump comes on to rain on what is being done, the market will react again. Big market moves are emotional swings. That half-day delay in being able to respond may take a slight edge off the response.
Here’s to the discovery of a true mandate. A mandate of, by and for the people. Simply the only mandate that would come close to demanding the value be recognized of a single individual, a person, a citizen.
You.