Do you have the sneaking suspicion that the 5,600-page Covid relief bill just passed by Congress has more than a few Secret Santa gifts for the corporations and oligarchs snuggling deep within its luxurious, high thread-count sheets?
Congress has done what it always does best: waited until the very last possible minute in a manufactured crisis to pass something, anything, before an artificially imposed deadline which comes right before the Christmas holiday. Then they call it a miraculous bipartisan victory.
Just imagine. They passed their miracle "stimulus" package just as Saturn and Jupiter were converging in the night sky, in a reprise of the Star of Bethlehem legend surrounding the birth of Jesus himself!
Forget the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affects you and your loved ones. Congress critters have been busily jostling for camera position as they shove to the head of the line to get vaccinated, even as the heroes they pay lip service to - frontline workers such as doctors, nurses, public safety personnel, grocery store clerks and teachers - have to patiently wait their own turns. The politicians insist that they are doing so for purely altruistic reasons having to do with the legal requirement of "continuity of government."
I mean, you can't expect our elected leaders to keep hammering us with their cruel austerity measures if they are not themselves hale, hearty and healthy, can you?
Here, via Time magazine, is just one of the statistical charts that should have the leaders of the richest country on earth hanging their heads in shame instead of bragging about their bipartisanship while they shoot themselves up with precious vaccine in what is just their latest outrageous act of political theater:
Select countries by economic relief, as a percent of GDP
Data for U.S. is an estimate as of Dec. 21. All other countries are as of Nov. 29.
Data for U.S. is an estimate as of Dec. 21. All other countries are as of Nov. 29.
Inadequate doesn't even begin to describe the miserable Covid relief package passed on Monday. As one commentator put it, the one-time $600 stimulus payment to qualifying Americans is tantamount to a restaurant patron tipping a waiter a measly quarter. It's worse than simply forgetting to leave a tip because it is a deliberate insult. Or put another way, $600 is what rich people think poor people think is a windfall. They either don't know or they don't care that it won't even cover half a month's rent. But just in case, and to prove they are not complete Grinches, lawmakers also gave renters one more month of reprieve from eviction.
With vaccinations underway, there is reason to hope that the coronavirus pandemic will begin to loosen its grip next year and that economic growth will accelerate. This deal creates a bridge from now until then. It deploys the ample resources of the federal government to prevent economic damage that could not be easily reversed, like the loss of homes and businesses.
Never mind that the deal is like building a flimsy 300 yard footbridge across the Atlantic Ocean. For as long we can hold out hope that one day we can achieve hopefulness, perhaps we won't even notice as we plummet to our dooms once the miracle month, the $600 stimulus checks and the 11 weeks of renewed unemployment benefits run out. Perhaps people won't hold a general strike or otherwise inconvenience the ruling class.
And if the Times hope-mongers can't get in their digs at Bernie Sanders and his half-successful crusade to get more direct cash aid to what he calls "working families" while they absolve Democrats of all culpability, then they simply aren't earning their generous paychecks.
Columnist Paul Krugman of Bernie Bro-bashing fame, for example, penned these repulsive, reactionary, divide-and-conquer centrist talking points in last Friday's effort:
About good guys getting it wrong: Economic relief legislation is largely about providing individuals and families with a financial lifeline during the pandemic. But who should get that lifeline?
Should it go to a majority of the population, like those $1,200 checks sent out in the spring? Or should the focus be on enhanced unemployment benefits for the millions of workers who, thanks to the pandemic, have no income at all?
According to The Washington Post, Senators Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin had a heated argument about this issue on Wednesday during a conference call, with Sanders pushing for broad aid while Manchin argued that enhanced unemployment benefits were more crucial.
Well, on most issues I’m a lot closer to Sanders than to Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. But in this case I’m sorry to say that Manchin is right. The economic pain from the coronavirus has been very unevenly distributed: A minority of the work force has been devastated, while those who have been able to keep working have, by and large, done relatively well. Overall wages and salaries have bounced back quickly.So if there’s a limit on the amount of aid that can be given, it’s more important to help the unemployed — and, in particular, to sustain that help well beyond the 10 weeks reportedly in the current deal — than to send checks to those who have been able to keep working. The best argument I can see for broader payments is political — people who haven’t lost their jobs to the pandemic may be more willing to support economic relief for those who have if they also get something from the deal.
Although I have been boycotting the Times comment section for months, I did feel compelled to post the following riposte to Krugman's neoliberal narrative, which ever so conveniently completely ignores the permanent economic underclass of millions upon millions of people:
The debate over giving aid to the unemployed vs giving aid to the non-unemployed skirts uncomfortably close to the right-wing cant that pits the "deserving poor" against the lazy slackers. This specious argument is why we don't have free college and other social benefits enjoyed by many another advanced country. Naysayers claim that if there is free tuition for everybody, spoiled rich kids will be lining up at the trough, champing at the bit to get into a public university or community college.
Give me a break! The fear that better-off people are cashing in on a universal benefit, that they might be getting a paltry $600 or $1200 government check at the expense of the unemployed simply deflects attention from the fact that billionaires increased their wealth to obscene new levels during this awful pandemic. The CARES Act was the most massive upward transfer of wealth in modern human history. It was and is disaster capitalism on steroids and crack. The Sophie's Choice between helping the unemployed and helping everybody just because they are human beings also pits ordinary people against each another. The non-unemployed include millions of people not counted in statistics because they gave up looking for work years ago. They include senior citizens and the disabled who are barely making ends meet. Eight million more people have been categorized as "officially" poor this year. Our "reps" just can't let austerity die, even with thousands dying needlessly all around them.
This small relief package is also short term. It appears to be a bridge from Trump times to Biden times, to get us past the Inauguration.
ReplyDeleteThen the new storms will hit, Huntergate and "OMG the deficit" will be among them, but no doubt more will come as evil meets creative.
Of course the Democrats lied too, using Covid as an election tool rather than a need. "It is all Trump's fault" and "he murdered us in numbers greater than WW2." Does that have a slight odor of hyperbole? Well now Democrats will meet responsibility and the need to act, and they'll find excuses to avoid it to serve their donors instead.
This will all have an entirely new shape in another two months' time. It is not likely to be pretty, and even less functional. However, the faults of the short term bridge don't tell us what that will look like, just that partisanship will rule.
I love your writing, Karen, but when you are responding to someone writing an opinion in the New York Times, you are the Star of Bethlehem! - a queen among us mortal commenters. LOVED your response to Kruggie - Just wish more people had the chance to read it.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThud! 5,600 pages fall from the sky into your legislators’ laps. And understand, the $900 billion covid relief bill is but an attachment to the $1.4 trillion omnibus bill covering federal expenditures through fiscal 2021. Bring on the forklifts.
What magic to pull together a ton of law while keeping it nimble enough to turn on a dime this way or that depending on leaders’ last minute “negotiations,” and the whole thing published within a matter of hours after McConnell gives printers the nod. How wonderful that legislation writ by our 535 legislators seldom gets read by them before they vote it up or down.
Legislators don't draft legislation. Their days are taken up by fund raising (50%), hearings, constituents, speeches (before empty House and Senate chambers), interviews (before as many TV cameras as possible), and weekly commutes from DC to a patch of home 500, 1000, 2000 miles away. All that while drafting thousands of pages of precision legalize? No way.
Here’s how it’s done. In backrooms under the blessing of a Pelosi or McConnell lobbyists and their gofers draft the bills, in this instance the whole 5,600 pages of covid relief. Much of it was drafted months earlier and set aside for the right moment. Lobbyists spend their days stitching together bills for the needs of “stakeholders.” Rarely is J. Q. Public one of the interests allowed into a backroom. Not even senators and representative are present during moments of legislative creation. The action begins on K Street.
What is to be done? Find out which lobbyists determine the course of your life. It is they you should cultivate. Send them donations and your best wishes for the new year. That’s more likely to pay off than sending holiday greetings to elected representatives.