Mitch McConnell may eventually kill the $2,000 direct payment, but at the moment he’s about as close to being outmaneuvered as he has been for a long time.
Mike DeBonis and Tony Romm at WaPo:
The shifting Senate winds come a day after the House passed a bill to increase stimulus checks with a bipartisan 275-to-134 vote. That proposal, called the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (Cash) Act, aims to boost the $600 payments authorized in the massive year-end spending-and-relief package that Trump signed Sunday by another $1,400 and expand eligibility for them.
McConnell initially blocked consideration of the House bill. But now some Senate Republicans are deserting ship to support the bill, including David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, for some reason (/sarcasm).
McConnell instead took note of Trump’s Sunday statement that called for not only larger checks but also new curbs on large tech companies and an investigation into the November election, and he suggested they would be dealt with in tandem. That tech provision is commonly referred to as “Section 230.”
“Those are the three important subjects the president has linked together,” he said. “This week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.”
Trump is still throwing fits to get people bigger checks and to end tech liability protection.
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP,” Trump wrote. “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH! Also, get rid of Section 230 – Don’t let Big Tech steal our Country, and don’t let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election. Get tough!”
I still am not sure what Trump thinks ending the tech liability protection provision will accomplish, although if it makes Facebook and YouTube and Whatever Social Media Company more careful about what they allow to be published, that might be a good thing.
After McConnell spoke Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a request to take up the House-passed bill.
“There’s a major difference in saying you support $2,000 checks and fighting to put them into law,” he said. “The House bill is the only way to deliver these stimulus checks before the end of session. Will Senate Republicans stand against the House of Representatives, the Democratic majority in the Senate and the president of their own party to prevent these $2,000 checks from going out the door?”
Well, look at you, Chuck, getting all confrontational.
Let us also pause to give credit to Bernie Sanders for leading the Senate Democratic charge.
Sanders, with support from the Senate Democratic caucus, plans to use a series of procedural moves to delay a vote on a bipartisan defense authorization bill. These maneuvers can’t prevent the defense bill from becoming law, but that’s not really the point. The bill is considered a must-pass, and Sanders’s objections can delay passage, annoy Senate Republicans, and potentially force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to raise a series of objections that could damage his party’s ability to hold onto its Senate majority.
And Sanders also has a clear demand: He will lift his objections to an immediate vote on the defense bill if McConnell permits a vote on legislation providing $2,000 checks to Americans earning less than $75,000 a year.
Of course there’s a lot else to criticize about the relief bill than the size of the direct payments, but it’s not often that Mitch and the Republican Party get snagged in the boy parts this tightly.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined from left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, dismisses the impeachment process against President Donald Trump saying, “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process,” as he meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The election, even the GA election, is so incredibly tribal. It's not about what issues you are for as much as which factions you want to whack. And the word 'whack' is applied in the mafia sense. Polling is not being done and it's probably not possible for a poll to be a predictor because a pivotal segment who won't vote until the 5th will be deciding on the 4th based on what King Trump says (assuming he does attend the rally in GA on the 4th as announced.)
Democrats turned out in GA largely to evict Trump. They did. DO low-information voters see an advantage in taking the Senate from Mitch. Holding up expanded benefits might motivate some people to turn out. But will they be enough? Traditional wisdom says Republicans have an advantage because they turn out in mid-term and special elections more than Democrats do.
On the subject of conventional wisdom, Republicans have the advantage by advocating for a divided government. That the sentiment exists is proven by the fact that some of the GA voters who voted to dump Trump voted for Republican candidates for Congress. (That's why there are two runoffs in the state Trump lost.) Independent voters may be the greatest culprits among active voters who split their vote. The question this week is if some of those fans of dysfunctional government will decide that Mitch is obstructing their stimulus money/ Will they be enough?
SOME Republican voters are furious that the GOP hasn't gone to war for Trump. Mitch made himself the poster boy for RINO Republicans when he endorsed Joe as president-elect and threw water on the idea of a revolution on the day after the GA election when the EC votes will be counted by Congress. Mitch does NOT want a public count (and accountability in 2022) of which Senators oppose the empty gesture of rejecting the EC votes in the swing states. Trump fanatics absolutely want that public count of GOP Senators so they know who to try to primary.
As I first said, the GA election is tribal. Is the Trumpster movement of Trump voters who hate Mitch strong enough to want to punish McConnell more than the desire to keep a majority to block Biden. The matter may be decided by Trump when he goes off-script on the 4th with a huge audience, If Trump instructs his most fervent voters to screw Mitch by not voting, Dems will have a majority in the Senate. I think this is more likely than the pros are estimating because Trump is fighting for control of the GOP and Mitch has declared Trump to be the dead king. Trump will have to reckon with who owns the party – throwing the two incumbents under the bus to screw Mitch tells GOP senators that Trump will turn his flying monkeys against them if they don't vote to obstruct the vote on the 6th – the day after the GA special election.
Pass the popcorn.
Ya gotta remember, maha, their "boy parts" are tiny, like tRUMP's, so it's mighty tough to snag them – let alone snag them tightly!
To call most Americans obtuse is an insult to the world's real obtuse people. Election after election, Americans look at the shiny social issues the RepubliKKKLANS flash at them, and proceed to vote for sociopaths and psychopaths like Moscow Mitch and Ron Johnson, who then proceed to fleece them of what little money they have left.
Rinse and repeat.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/louisiana-congressman-elect-dies-covid-025154687.html
And Trump said: " Oh, Barron got it also, it was nothing more than the sniffles"
Krugman writes that 2020 ended the Regan era. Well I certainly hope so. At the time there was some truth to the idea that government was the problem or at least a big part of the problem. Now we are fairly sure that THE LACK of government is part of the problem, and for the moment about $1,400 short of a proper government. Like the great conjunction we see a rare political alignment of Trump and Pelosi. Well the stars (OK technically the planets) had to be foretelling something, didn't they? Moscow Mitch, now becomes Putin's puppet to weaken the U.S. from inside the establishment and is now the official turd in the punch bowl. I miss Rudy, who showed us that Trickle Down was more than an economic theory, and could be a bit of a fashion statement too, but Krugman said that all died with 2020.
I am a little cranky as all I wanted for Xmas was a COVID vax. Warp Speed just isn't what it used to be in those old Star Trek episodes. The only thing that is showing any speed at all is the virus. The new high speed version lost no time getting to the U.S.. They should have put Moscow Mitch on that one, he can stop or at least slow down anything it seems. He is the right man assigned to the wrong job.
Well, make it two more days and you can proudly wear that – I survived 2020 T-shirt.
They're all "China Virus" but they don't call this new strain the "British mutation."
"Funny" how that works.
It's remarkable how Trump is not only an authoritarian, but deeply, deeply stupid. He doesn't realize that if Twitter were criminally and civilly liable for the violent hate speech he posts on a daily basis, they'd ban him in about an hour. It's clear he doesn't think the law applies to him; this is just the latest evidence.
Bernie Sanders had been filibustering the Defense Appropriations bill with the intent of filibustering until late on Saturday to force Mitch to allow a vote on the 'clean' $2K stimulus.
Forty one (41) democratic senators joined with #MoscowMitch to kill Bernie's filibuster. The upgraded relief/stimulus is DEAD thanks to Dem senators who know that supporting the working classes is much less important than getting out of DC yesterday for the weekend.