House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw a political tantrum on Twitter, scolding Republicans in the Senate for putting “lives and livelihoods” at risk by not holding a vote on her party’s $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill.
Instead of holding a vote on The #HeroesAct, Senate Republicans are engaging in a clear act of political retribution designed to help the President keep his job.
The Senate must stop playing along with the President’s dangerous tactics & take steps to save lives and livelihoods.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 20, 2020
I’m not sure how authorizing “expedited green cards” for migrant health workers and opening up banking services to cannabis businesses saves lives and jobs, but it’s a huge bill with a lot of words in it. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out exactly why Republicans are opposing this monstrosity, saying the bill “reads like the Speaker of the House pasted together random ideas from her most liberal members and slapped the word ‘coronavirus’ on top of it.” McConnell and Trump have both urged the Senate to wait and see if another huge stimulus bill is even necessary.
Derek Klock, a professor of finance at Virginia Tech, said he was not convinced that there was a need for another stimulus package just yet.
“We need to give the programs in place time to work,” he told Newsweek. “That said, I think that the CARES Act made a mistake in the additional flat $600 per week unemployment benefit…. many out of work workers are now collecting more in unemployment than they were paid on their jobs.
“The perversion of incentive most likely allowed employers to just lay off workers and tell them that they will be better off in the meantime with unemployment and will be less likely to be exposed to the virus by staying at home. This needs to be amended,” he said.
Democrats are trying to keep the hysteria level about the coronavirus ratcheted up in order to panic the Senate into passing trillions in new spending that may not even be necessary — or desirable. Democrats have stuck a liberal wish-list of policies in with the cash payouts that Trump would be forced to swallow in order to get the cash into the pockets of voters.
That tactic might have worked in the early days of the pandemic, but it’s not likely to work now. One Senator, John Kennedy of Louisiana, describes the HEROES Act as “basically a remake of Western Civilization bill.”
Kennedy suggested even with major changes he does not believe it would be likely to gain majority support in the Senate, with Republicans having been “so shocked” when they saw it.
“I don’t think we are going to have a fifth bill,” Kennedy told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I’m not at all sanguine about the prospects. Some of my colleagues disagree with me, but I think it’s way less than 50 percent.”
Kennedy thinks Pelosi “overplayed her hand.”
“The reason is, I think Speaker Pelosi overplayed her hand. I mean her bill is so grandiose, it’s not a coronavirus bill. It’s basically a remake of Western civilization bill. And I think that the Republicans in the Senate were so shocked when they saw it that at this juncture she could take her bill and eliminate every other word, and cut the cost by 75 percent, and it still wouldn’t pass,” he said.
Kennedy also indicated his feeling that if she did adjust to that extent, there then may be members in the House who would not support it once it were sent back.
Indeed, radical liberal House members see this as their last chance — perhaps in a generation — to “transform” America into a socialist paradise. But the panic has passed. We may still be in a crisis situation, but the sort of measures that were necessary two months ago aren’t needed now.
The Senate won’t consider any more stimulus bills for a while.
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