Politics of the COVID-19 relief bill and the new Republican obstructionist strategy against the Biden-Harris Administration

The Congressional Republicans and Democrats announced a COVID-19 relief bill that accomplishes only a fraction of what needed to be done in provided economic relief. It does apparently have some beneficial features. But the reality is that it a defeat for the Democrats after months of effort. Evaluating the Democrats' negotiating tactics may be "inside baseball". But the Republicans are actually good at showing that they are slapping the Democrats around in bad-faith negotiations. While the Democrats are just terrible at effectively stigmatizing the Republicans for their bad faith and destructive priorities.

David Sirota gives what I consider a fair summary of the actual results substantively and politically ($600 Is Not Enough, And It Won’t Get Easier Daily Poster 12/20/2020):

Though the legislative language of the final package has not yet been released, it appears the meager checks come in a bill that will give new tax benefits to corporate executives to write off their meals and provide other tax breaks to businesses that used the Paycheck Protection Program — which will be a windfall for the wealthy. Will the bill change the law to similarly exempt emergency unemployment benefits from tax levies? We don’t yet know, but there’s no indication it will.

According to a bill summary circulating on Capitol Hill, the legislation provides a mere $286 billion for the survival checks and unemployment benefits, and an additional $51 billion for food aid and rental assistance. That’s not nothing, but it’s obviously inadequate. For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest one percent of households.

Much of the blame for this debacle certainly goes to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who seems absolutely determined to starve the country. But much of it also goes to Democratic leaders who had one of the easiest political opportunities to forge a bipartisan coalition or a much bigger lifeline to Americans — and then decided to squander it.

The Republicans are disgustingly loyal to their campaign donors in the priorities on which they insisted. But as I've been discussing in recent posts, the Republicans were also successful at identifying the Obama-Biden Administration with unpopular corporate bailouts that the Republicans themselves, of course, supported enthusiastically because that's what their donors pay them for.

Other summaries of the deal: Caitlin Emma and Marianne Levine, Breaking down the $900B stimulus package and $1.4T omnibus bill Politico 12/20/2020: Jordain Carney, Congress clinches sweeping deal on coronavirus relief, government funding The Hill 12/20/2020; Andy Sullivan and Richard Cowan, 'Help is on the way' with U.S. Congress ready to pass $900 billion COVID-19 aid bill Reuters 12/21/2020.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader gave a presentation on the deal they just made, Speaker Pelosi, Sen. Schumer on COVID relief funding/Omnibus PBS Newshour 12/20/2020:

I've become so frustrated with Pelosi's hesitant strategies, her tiresome listing of things we're somehow supposed to be excited about, and her endless excuses for losing to Republicans - all without defining identifiable popular goals that listeners might remember five minutes later and without calling out Republicans on their deeply bad faith or clearly blaming them for bad policies.

In other words, she has spent so many years apologizing for being a Democrat that she can't message anything any more much beyond, "We lost again but it's not totally bad." It's especially frustrating to me, because she was much more effective as the House Democratic leader in the 1980s. The fact that Pelosi, a literal "San Francisco Democrat" from one of the safest Democratic districts i the country was selected as leader. Prior to that, the Democrats had somehow convinced themselves they should elect a Democratic leader from a more competitive district on the theory that they would present an image for the party more appealing to moderate voters. What it actually meant was they were limited in being able to be full-throated defenders of some important party positions and were more vulnerable to being unseated in elections.

Now, listening to Pelosi makes me nostalgic for the days of Tom Foley and Dick Gephardt.

In this presentation, she says after 5:15, "What took so long? What took so long is because we could not get our Republican colleagues to crush the virus". I couldn't understand it. Why would they not want to invest in the science that has told us so importantly that it requires testing, tracing, treatment, separation, sanitation, and the rest?"

"Why does Pelosi keep repeating the demand to "crush the virus"? It just seems like an odd metaphor. "Crush The Virus" doesn't really have quite the ring of "getting COVID relief cash directly to people affected" or "getting everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible."

It really seems to me that a message more along the lines of, we've been fighting for six months to get relief checks to the people and the Republicans fought against it tooth and nail. We're been trying to get funding to state and local governments to keep them operating in the pandemic crisis and to prevent the millions of layoffs that are about to happen because we could never get them to agree on anything sufficient." (Schumer does pick up the theme and then Pelosi after that, both long after most people presumably stopped listening.)

That might not sound very collegial. But it would be more useful in positioning the Democrats, including in the two critical January 5 Georgia Senate elections, and more helpful in fighting the Republicans' already-functioning strategy of trying to sabotage any economic recovery during a Biden-Harris Administration. Pelosi professes to be puzzled as to what they are doing. ("I couldn't understand it.") But it's darn obvious. And it's an even more belligerent version of the obstructionist strategy they ran against the Obama-Biden Administration.

Chuck Schumer gave his usual snoozer message, too. Although it did clear the bar of being not-as-bad-as-Pelosi's.

But this is a preview of a big part of the Republicans' political strategy for the next four years. Obstruct and misrepresent the Biden-Harris proposals, bargaining them down to more plutocrat-friendly terms and then opposed them anyway, show the public they can beat the Democrats up over and over, and - most importantly - attack the Democrats for supporting corporate crony-capitalist measures while blocking economic policies that provide visible and quick economic recovery, higher wages, and rapidly increasing employment.

That isn't speculation. It was the strategy they ran against the Obama-Biden Administration that ended up with Donald Trump as the Republican President. For the Republicans' point of view, that strategy was a success!

This headline from SFGate for a Washington Post story is a good example of the kind of thing that steps on the Democrats' messaging in a way Republicans will cynically but happily exploit: White House secures 'three martini lunch' tax deduction in draft of coronavirus relief package (Jeff Stein 11/20/2020):

The draft language of the emergency coronavirus relief package includes a tax break for corporate meal expenses pushed by the White House and denounced by congressional Democrats, according to a summary of the deal circulating among congressional officials and officials who are familiar with the provision. ...

Democratic leaders agreed to the provision in exchange for Republicans agreeing to expand tax credits for low-income families and the working poor in the final package, according to a Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of internal negotiations.

"Republicans are nickel-and-diming benefits for jobless workers, while at the same time pushing for tax breaks for three-martini power lunches. It's unconscionable," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.