Once again deference to working American families has been rebuffed as congress was unable to come to an agreement for pandemic relief. In comes the president to sign executive orders because he has not taken part in any of the negotiations, which have only added to the confusion, prompted more questions, and created a moral dilemma as to whether it is legal or not despite the intention.
The Administration's trade representative Peter Navarro said that if congress can come to agreement then there would be no need for executive action, which means that congress needs to come together and get a deal done immediately. Think about it this way, Americans are seeing the public health system overwhelmed, a decimated economy, little prospects, and now to have congress completely break down unable to pass relief. It becomes too much and provides some truth to the low-grade depression that Michelle Obama talked about in an interview this week.
However, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that Democrats have been will to meet in the middle on the negotiations with Democrats at $3 trillion and Republicans at $1 trillion. Mr. Durbin also said that House Democrats passed a second relief bill back in May, but that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sat on it until last week, and now he's not even involved in the negotiations. Talk about an abdication of leadership. The funny thing is, is that Democrats passed the bill in May because they saw the need for it then. The Republicans (Mr. McConnell) sat on because they maintained wishful thinking that we would need it because, frankly, they put their faith in the administration that the pandemic would be under control, and now are back to their spending reservations. However, the president is signing executive orders for a relief package, not because he wants to, but because his reelection prospects depend on it.
The National Review's Rich Lowry brought up a point about spending that as a conservative he doesn't have a problem with the spending now because of the current state of the economy, but he had a problem with the spending when the economy was good. He didn't elaborate but wouldn't that be on Republicans who passed a $2 trillion tax cut that went primarily to the wealthy? As for congresspeople, Joshua Johnson explained that Mitch McConnell said that it's difficult to get a deal this close to the election, which Mr. Johnson unpacked explained that because of the tradition political positions and posturing on both sides, it makes a deal all the more difficult.
It all comes back around to the lack of a cohesive national response at the beginning and the administration's inaction and distribution of misinformation that has sealed the countries fate. We are now at 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases and over 160,000 deaths. In the past two weeks an American dies from Covid-19 every 77 seconds, but as the president says - It is what it is.
Lastly, for a bit of pure politics, as Kasie Hunt explained, it seems as though it's Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) versus the world in the Democratic VP sweepstakes. Ms. Hunt also said that there is a suggestion that the Harris people are playing political hardball by leaking opposition research on other VP candidates. One thing is for sure, no matter the party, the longer a political contest goes on and the closer to the deadline it gets, it assuredly will get uglier and uglier. The problem with not picking Kamala Harris at this point is that every other potential choice will be picked a part by the twitter-sphere and surely Democrats will damage their own representative ticket. At this point, like everything else in the country right now, sooner is required over later.
Panel: Kasie Hunt, NBC News; Joshua Johnson, NBC News; Rich Lowry, The National Review
No comments:
Post a Comment