Over the past three days a bipartisan group of senators, not leadership, constructed a $1.6 Trillion emergency aid package to rescue the U.S. economy and American workers. The package had the support of Mitch McConnell. It is called The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or “CARE Act“. [READ BILL S.548 HERE]
However, at the last minute House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, having returned from her House recess vacation sipping cocktails poolside, instructed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to crush the senate effort.
Power hungry Pelosi sees an opportunity to use the looming economic crisis as leverage for selecting winners & losers amid the K-Street lobbying community. Donors for Democrats will be rewarded; supporters of Republicans, not-so-much. This is DC at it’s worst and Pelosi isn’t going to lose another opportunity. It’s the same process she used in ’08/’09.
“Twice in one lifetime… How blessed am I?”
Senator Schumer did as he was instructed. The relief bill did not pass cloture (60 votes needed), and the three-day effort collapsed. Immediately the DOW futures dropped 5%.
WASHINGTON DC – “I want everybody to fully understand if we aren’t able to act tomorrow, it will be because of our colleagues on the other side continuing to dicker when the country expects us to come together and address the problem,” McConnell said on the floor. He added that over the last 48 hours there were bipartisan discussions among “regular members of the Senate, not in the Leadership office, not in the speaker’s office for goodness sakes.”
“She’s the Speaker of the House, not the Speaker of the Senate,” McConnell added. “We were doing just fine until that intervention.” (more)
There are two main points Pelosi is targeting. First, because COVID-19 creates a MASSIVE SPENDING opportunity, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to include the elimination of college debt, literally wipe out student loans – which ironically and intentionally were created under Obamacare, in the coronavirus bill.
This move has nothing to do with the economic impacts of coronavirus, but it allows: (a) a political win to get the Bernie AOC crowd behind the Democrat candidate; and (b) will allow more government funding to ideological college interests by wiping out the debt problem.
Secondly, Speaker Pelosi wants unilateral control over which companies will receive any financial assistance or loans to survive the crisis.
As was the case with the 2008 Bank Bailouts, 2009 ARRA (stimulus plan) and Auto-Bailout, Pelosi wants control to select companies for assistance that are owned and operated by Democrat donors; and to scuttle any businesses or corporations who are led by republican donors. This was a big part of Obama’s stimulus program and GM bailout scheme. You might remember the dealerships helped were based on party registration.
WASHINGTON DC – Two ugly truths about any epic economic crisis are that not all businesses will survive, and government interventions help determine which businesses will survive.
As coronavirus crushes the economy, Washington policymakers are scrambling to figure out who to bail out, a responsibility that one veteran of the 2008 financial rescue morbidly but accurately compared to the frantic triage work that doctors are currently doing in overcrowded Italian hospitals.
[…] As Congress rushes to assemble an enormous stimulus package to try to slow the freefall or at least pad the landing, it’s becoming clear that a lot of federal dollars will be sent straight to American taxpayers, but also that a lot of federal dollars will go straight to the companies that employ them. Washington’s last epic bailout, the $700 billion Wall Street rescue of 2008, was wildly unpopular but ultimately quite successful—and while a financial panic is a different kind of crisis than a viral pandemic, it has some lessons for today about when companies should get help and how that help should be delivered. (read more)
The difference between Nancy’s prior exploits (in 2008 /2009) and today is that previously she had President Obama to support all of her political schemes. Now she could be up against President Trump who might use his considerable platform to call attention to the partisan spending…. Key words “could” and “might”.
However, don’t hold your breath; I doubt President Trump will take on Pelosi. He’ll more than likely sign anything she gives him because she controls the media, and the media is fueling the direction of the panic narrative and blame-casting. Together with corporate lobbyists, the reality is, corporate media controls congress.
Yup. We’re going back to the future and it’s politics.
Democrats don’t give a damn about what happens with the economy because Donald Trump is George Bush and will be forced to own the economic collapse he self-created. So there’s no pressure based on the severity of the collapse… Also given the political damage being inflicted on the White House, there’s no urgency for Nancy… There is only upside for Pelosi in choosing the winners while she knows the media will never call her out on it.
If all this seems painfully familiar to you…. yes, we’ve been here and done all this a little more than a decade ago. Here we go again…. Again, here’s the BILL
