Whether you call it the flaccid stimulus bill or the frustrating relief bill, it appears there will be something passed no later than tomorrow. That’s assuming Trump doesn’t throw a wrench in the works.
[Update: The Mahablog magic strikes again — it was announced a deal has been struck just after I posted this.]
The poison pill provision introduced by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R, PA) that would have tied the hands of the Federal Reserve has been watered down. Here’s the deal:
Mr. Toomey had sought to bar the Fed and Treasury Department from setting up any loan program similar to those established this year that have helped to keep credit flowing to corporate, municipal and medium-size business borrowers during the pandemic recession.
The agreed-upon alternative, offered by Mr. Schumer and still being drafted near midnight on Saturday, aides familiar with the process said, would bar only programs that were more or less exact copycats of the ones newly employed in 2020.
That sounds annoying but not catastrophic. Yet to be resolved:
Among the outstanding hurdles for lawmakers and aides racing to draft text was a push to expand a paid leave mandate set to lapse at the end of the year, how much money should be allocated to private and parochial schools and whether businesses should be allowed to deduct from their taxes loans given under a popular federal loan program, according to officials involved in the discussions.
However,
One of the potential remaining stumbling blocks is President Trump, who has largely been removed from the stimulus negotiations as he continues to attack the outcome of the Nov. 3 election and undermine President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, he tweeted his frustration with Congress for not yet acting on a stimulus and signaled that he would want larger direct payments than the $600 payments currently under discussion.
“GET IT DONE, and give them more money in direct payments,” the president wrote on Twitter.
I’d like to see a larger payment, too, but Mr. Stable Genius should be complaining to Mitch. And I am so happy I am not in Congress. I think at this point I’d be homicidal.
Elsewhere: There has been a lot of talk that Trump is losing it. We might wonder whether he ever had it. But there have been leaked accounts of oval office meetings that claimed Trump talked about martial law and appointing Sidney Powell special counsel to inspect Dominion voting machines. Dominion, meanwhile, has threatened Powell with a defamation suit.
See Peter Wehner, Trump Is Losing His Mind.
Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.
So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.
“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”
Trump today was retweeting crap from Gateway Pundit and a string of people I never heard of that claimed more votes were counted for POTUS than there are registered voters in the U.S. He’s not giving up. We may have to send in marshalls to haul him out of the White House after all. Fun!
Trump is 'Sprayed Bug Crazy" . we are in a dangerous and interesting time.
I've marched with BLM with my daughter and wife. They did a brilliant job of organizing building I multi-dimensional movement. Proud Boys want to kill them – literally. I heard a lay comment last week which I think was prophetic – that this will be (was) the last peaceful assembly of the Proud Boys. (Only four people knifed) I fear the call for anarchy on the 6th of January will go out and Proud Boys will answer. I don't want any BLM martyrs. Congress will confirm Biden on the 6th. It's a done deal. The kooks in a fantasy bubble think Trump will do something magical and I think they will snap when the coup doesn't happen.
Trump seems to be toying with martial law. I don't think any National Guard from any states will roll to support a coup. The pretense of invoking the Insurrection Act gets support if there are "riots" on the 6th. Calling out the troops on a day when the only violence is from the Proud Boys will ring hollow. Calling out the troops and linking it to the election is a military coup attempt by definition. (Which is why military commanders will sit on their hands.)
I'm normally the guy who calls for mass protests. This time, let them have the streets and don't provide anything to legitimize troops. This is a war Trump has to win in one day – before Congress settles the election officially We win by running out the clock on the 6th. The war is over on the 7th.
Hopefully, if tRUMP really goes ape-poop and wants to destroy the world, one of the remaining sycophants has the brains to substitute an old ESPN football-phone for the "nuclear football."
Doug, even after tRUMP finally leaves – and all that may ensue in the interim – I expect the Proud Boy types to continue some sort of terror raids in large cities and busy suburbs near those urban centers.
I agree the Proud Boys will start a resistance movement. Violence will force most Republicans to renounce the backbone of the Trump movement. This will accelerate a split between the Trumpsters and the Republican party and their corporate masters.
Given the depositions from multiple sources on the Michigan clowns who wanted to kidnap the governor, some of these groups are pretty well infiltrated. The FBI can't stop all the attempts but they can put something together. I think the more significant the sedition, the more likely multiple informants are sending reports to the feds,
As Trump's days dwindle, only the real kooks remain. Sidney Powell is widely regarded, in a town full of lawyers as a kook with no proof. Moreover, Trump doesn't realize that calling her "Special Counsel" means nothing. More proof that he has no idea how things work.
Flynn on the other hand scares me. Once Trump exhausts what he thinks are the legal remedies, than the only resort is brute force, what Flynn's been agitating for. We have 30 days to Jan 20.
McConnell seems to be the keystone. Trump will be gone from 1600, but the mismanagement of the nation will continue, and Proud Boys and their stupid ilk will still be with us.
"
" We may have to send in marshalls to haul him out of the White House after all. Fun!"
I'd definitely watch that.
Stimulus needs modifiers, and frustrating and flaccid works for me, though the business people are going with late and lame. You can modify the stimulus word any way you like, but it is still just a big float on the national credit card. Never have we seen the level of national debt we have seen under Trump, and remember it started by giving a big tax break to the very rich. We are in no way near out of this crisis, and at some point the credit limit on our national credit card will become a factor. As Krugman suggests this is no time to listen to deficit hawks. It is the time to make sure the rich pay their fair share of the payments on the national credit card. This will not be easy.
The democrats appear to have already set themselves on a glide path to lose the House and maybe more seats in the Senate come the midterms. And I don't even want to think about the statehouses right now. The millions of people who are unemployed, facing eviction and left to the mercy of covid-ignorant employers are voters who are not going to be feeling it in 2022. And let's face it; a lot of the votes the democrats got in 2020 were anti-Trump votes. They need to generate enthusiasm from positive actions as they won't have the negative enthusiasm from getting Trump out, instead of just satisfying themselves with alienating the progressive base as a way forward to work with the GOP. That comes from putting McConnell and the republicans on blast in messaging across the board every time a democrat is within range of a camera and mic so voters know, they're the problem. They can't continue to just play along in the hopes the republicans will like them. History and common sense shows it ain't happening.
If the democrats aren't willing to stand on their hind legs and fight they don't deserve to win. Problem is, they don't lose, we do.
OT – Trump will probably pardon himself because he's (reportedly) furious that Pence will preside over the official count on Jan 6. Pence is leaving the country immediately after he performs his constitutional duty in the count of electoral votes which officially and finally makes Biden the winner. Trump won't trust Pence to pardon Trump if Trump was to resign anyway – Trump doesn't trust anyone not named Trump. The legality of a self-pardon is in doubt by legal scholars. Trump can (and will) pardon his family members and that will hold up. Those people can't take the 5th after they're pardoned if questioned by Congress or the FBI and must testify truthfully or they commit a felony not covered by the pardons. And Trump will be implicated by his family for crimes Trump himself is not actually pardoned for.
There's something beautiful about that.