Clinging To Right-Wing Ideology Won't Help GOP This Year

The Democrats have passed another stimulus bill in the House of Representatives. It does many things -- including providing assistance to state governments and hospitals. But one of the most important things it does is continue the expanded unemployment insurance through the end of this year (it runs out in June without this new money). It also gives citizens another check.

In other words, it concentrates on helping average Americans. That's why the Republicans don't like it.

They still cling to their failed "trickle-down" economic theory. They think helping workers and the poor just makes them lazy. Their idea of helping is to give more to the rich and corporations. They tell us that the extra money for the rich and corporations will trickle down and help everyone. This has never worked. It just makes the rich even richer, and widens the income/wealth gap between the rich and everyone else.

Sadly, even in this pandemic recession, the Republicans still hold to their failed policy. They have cut taxes for the rich and created a $500 billion dollar slush fund for corporations. They think that's enough. They think a generous unemployment plan to help workers just makes them lazy, so they want to end it. They've helped the rich, and think that's all they need to do.

They are wrong. It wasn't the rich that needed help. It was ordinary Americans -- and that has become even more important in this pandemic recession. If we are to save the economy, we must help those citizens that are hurting. Refusing to realize this will not help Republicans hold on to power in the November election.

Here's how Paul Waldman puts it in his column in The Washington Post:

“The worst is behind us,” declared Herbert Hoover in 1930. Two years later, Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency by an 18-point margin, capturing 42 states.

Now, nearly 90 years later, at least some Republicans are starting to worry that President Trump could meet a fate similar to Hoover’s, and drag them down with him.

The latest weekly employment figures, released Thursday, show the magnitude of this economic catastrophe: Another 2.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total to 38.6 million over nine weeks. Analysts are now predicting that the unemployment rate will soon top 30 percent. The highest it reached during the Great Depression was 25.6 percent.

And what’s on the minds of the Republican leadership? They’re worried that we’re coddling the unemployed . . . .

But the problem right now is that there aren’t any jobs. It’s not like millions of businesses can’t operate because no one’s answering their help wanted ads. That extra money is keeping people afloat, and is quickly recirculated into the economy, multiplying its beneficial impact.

So this is the position of the president and the Republican leadership in Congress: What we really have to worry about now is that Americans are being lazy, and what we need to get them out there reviving the economy is some good old-fashioned deprivation.

Yet at the same time, there are cracks showing in the GOP’s resistance to further economic rescue. With the election only 5½ months away, some in the party are questioning whether having Democrats demand that the government take action to help struggling Americans while Republicans say no is a brilliant strategy. . . .

There are a few other Republicans in the Senate expressing an interest in an infrastructure bill — which of course they had three years to do and never did, so much so that “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke— while others are looking at some more aid to states, and some want to shore up the Paycheck Protection Program, which provides loans to businesses.

What all these ideas have in common, however, is that they don’t provide direct assistance to people, either in the form of extended unemployment benefits or another round of cash payments. And this shows how Republicans are struggling to reconcile their conservative ideology with the economic and political demands of this unprecedented crisis.

Unlike Democrats, who are comfortable with the kind of aggressive government action required to alleviate this depression, Republicans naturally recoil from the kinds of steps that may be required to prevent them from being wiped out in November.

So here’s the situation. In one corner you have Trump, who is opposing further rescue packages not because of firm ideological convictions but because he’s gripped by magical thinking. He’s possessed of the hope that just as there is a miracle cure for the coronavirus, with enough cheerleading (and a heavy dose of blame-shifting), the economy will come roaring back in a few months.

In another corner you have Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who remains adamantly opposed to any further rescue bills. His opposition is a little hard to explain, though he may have concluded that Trump will lose, so Republicans might as well hold the economy down so President Biden can suffer the consequences.

Then you have these other Republicans, many of whom are up for reelection, beginning to come around to the idea that doing something — even if it’s not in line with their small-government principles — is far better than doing nothing, if the latter means defeat in November.

We don’t know yet whether they can persuade Trump and McConnell that inaction means disaster. But with each passing day, our economic hole grows deeper and the likelihood of us crawling our way out by the end of the year grows smaller.

At some point Republicans may all come to understand the position it has put them in. But by then it may be too late.