The feckless preeners who believe they actually have a grip on the country's well-being are set to take their annual Christmas and New Year vacation beginning Friday, December 18, though, as usual, they have plenty of unfinished business to complete before than.
First, they need to make sure there's a government to run when they return. Last week, they passed a short-term funding bill to keep the government operating for a week. The money from that measure runs out on Friday, so they're looking at another $1.4 trillion package that would keep the government in business for three or six months or until they need to go to the Fed to borrow more money they can't raise by taxing the citizenry (which, by the way, is largely broke and not in much of a mood to fund more government spending escapades).
Additionally, since they've been wallowing in their own self-adulation for the past six months over getting re-elected (most did, some did not), they've failed spectacularly on coming up with a second huge stimulus bill which was promised in August. Or September. Or October. OK, maybe November. Ah, it's December.
The current status is about the same as it's been for the past six months. They're getting closer. Maybe. While the price tag seems to be pretty much agreed upon at $908 billion, the latest scheme now features two bills, one that includes all the things the bickering sides (House Democrats and Senate Republicans) can agree on and another that features the two main sticking points: the Democrats favored aid to cities and states and the Republican push for a shield against pandemic liability for employers (purportedly only those with 500 or more employees). The smaller measure has a price tag of $160 billion.
The larger, $748 billion proposal, includes a jumbo pot of money for extended unemployment benefits (16 weeks at an additional $300 per week), $300 billion in small business relief, and $16 billion for coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution. The bipartisan bill also provides billions of dollars more in funding for emergency food assistance, education and bailouts for airlines, and money for Amtrak and public transit, which is odd since people have been told not to travel much during the holidays.
Altogether, the two bills throw more money the government doesn't have towards problems they are largely responsible for creating. Americans would likely be better off if the two sides continue bickering and get nothing accomplished (par for the course for the past 40 years), leave town and never return. At first blush, we'd save about $2.4 trillion and not be tortured by inane comments like Dick Durbin's:
"Weeks have passed, hours and hours of Zoom calls and we've reached this point. It feels good, it feels like legislating, it feels like why we were elected."
or, John Cornyn's:
"We’ve got to vote on this thing by Friday and get out of here."
What the latest iteration of stimulus spending leaves out is another round of checks to working class Americans. Neither bill contains a provision for $1200 checks, or $600 checks or even $12 checks. While congress picks winners and losers, they apparently feel justified putting ordinary citizens in the loser column. Well, thanks for showing us all what you really think of the people who vote for you.
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) are pushing for $1200 checks to individuals, $2400 to married couples and $500 for each dependent. So too is President Trump, who has voiced a preference for the stimulus checks and could possibly veto any proposal that doesn't include direct spending on individuals. The president tweeted Monday that he would like to see direct checks of $2000.
Members of congress might have the 2/3rds majorities in both houses to override a veto, but nobody is really considering that possibility. After all, the pampered politicians might have to spend another day or two working on the "people's business" which they've neglected for the past six months.
These people seem to like feeling important. Their drama queen status is being furthered by their own deadline, predicated on taking a two-week vacation, the absolute height of haughty, self-indulgent, narcissistic behavior.
There's almost no chance that the assembled idiots won't get a stimulus bill and spending bill done in time to make their flights out of town to spend the holidays with their families while telling the rest of us to keep working until Christmas Eve and through the week before New Year's, and, by the way, don't celebrate with any more than six of your friends and family.
They have no shame, no principles, no integrity.
They've waited and waited and stalled, and posed, and strutted like horny roosters for months, done close to nothing and want everybody to notice their grand accomplishments which include a national debt approaching $27.5 trillion, a wrecked economy, rushed vaccines for a disease that does less harm than the seasonal flu, and most of them on the take from big pharma, big banks, big business in general, and big China.
The American people would largely be better off without them.
At the Close, Monday, December 14, 2020:
Dow: 29,861.55, -184.82 (-0.62%)
NASDAQ: 12,440.04, +62.17 (+0.50%)
S&P 500: 3,647.49, -15.97 (-0.44%)
NYSE: 14,214.93, -140.36 (-0.98%)
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