TO BAD IT’S MONTHS BEFORE BIDEN CAN TAKE OVER

 

…Both Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer are against the minimum stimulus package offered by the GOP

 

Once again, the networks turned away when the President began lying about winning the election

 

What is disgusting about the after election issues is that there is no attention being offered by the GOP for dealing with what the country needs as a stimulus package.   Thousands of businesses are going out of business because a pandemic is keeping them from doing “business as usual”.  Plus, the Republicans, specifically the GOP-run US Senate is sitting on their hands instead of helping US citizens.

Meanwhile the Congressional Democratic leaders are properly accusing the Republicans of refusing to confront the dramatically worsening pandemic and they are instead acquiescing to a defeated President Trump’s false insistence that he won the presidential election.

Republicans dismissed these facts and Trump is doing nothing while his only public comments are coming through a series of Twitter posts that included false claims of electoral success.  On top of this, Washington has become paralyzed over the past days as over 1 million new people have tested positive for the virus and the virus death numbers are climbing rapidly.

At least the President-elect, Joe Biden joined congressional Democratic leaders and is demanding a new economic relief package to address the dramatically worsening coronavirus pandemic before the end of the year.  I doubt that anything will occur unless the January Georgia Senate run-off election goes to the Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has flatly rejected any such stimulus proposal, while Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) implored that both sides should begin negotiating.  All this as the virus is sending a new shudder through the nation’s economy.

There have been more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases each day for the past 20 days, including more than 150,000 yesterday. The crush is leading a number of state and local leaders to pause or reverse reopening plans.  Some states are talking about not allowing any get-togethers for Thanksgiving.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a stay-at-home advisory for the nation’s third-largest city and asked her residents to cancel all Thanksgiving get-together plans.  Maryland recently issued its own new restrictions, as other jurisdictions have signaled they could invoke similar moves. 

Biden campaigned on stringent policy measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, while Trump has just spent his time watching TV and sending mis-information tweets.

After his rallying earlier amid optimism about two new vaccines, the Dow Jones industrial average fell a full 1%, amid new Covid expansion worries.   All this, as Arizona announces that it has gone to Biden/Harris and that now officially gives Biden 291 electoral votes with more to come.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said Congress needs to provide more economic relief to help sustain growth, though he didn’t endorse a specific proposal.

“The path forward is going to be challenging for a number of reasons,” he said, speaking on a virtual panel hosted by the European Central Bank. “My sense is that we will need to do more and that Congress may need to do more as well.”

As expected, Trump’s continues to refuse to acknowledge Biden’s presidential win and he refuses to participate in a normal transition process.  He seemed likely to stall the federal response even more, depriving Biden and his team of some of the normal resources they need to put a quick response in place.  The head of the GSA, a Trump nominee, still refuses to write the letter that would let the Biden administration do the necessary transition activities.

Democrats had approved a stimulus package that would exceed $2 trillion since this last Summer.  If you remember, before the election, Trump had said he would support something that was even more substantial. The president even tweeted incessantly about the need for a giant economic relief bill before the Nov. 3 election, but since losing the election, he has been silent on the matter.

Biden discussed the matter on a phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).  In a joint readout following the call, the Democrats said they had talked about “the urgent need for the Congress to come together in the lame duck session on a bipartisan basis to pass a bill that provides resources to fight the COVID-19 pandemic,” including relief for families and businesses and support for state and local governments.  But so far, nothing from the Republicans in Congress.

Trump hasn’t acknowledged the recent surge in virus cases on his Twitter feed, which as usual, is his primary method of his communicating.  On Oct. 28, he predicted that after the election the “talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people.”  He was wrong as usual, as everything is just the opposite.

In fact, the death rate is climbing rapidly, and hospitals are nearing capacity in a number of places, in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania.  These are states he had won in 2016, and multiple other states are scrambling to deal with the new surge.

The Democrats have called for a wide-ranging bill that would extend new unemployment benefits, send another round of $1,200 checks to American households, provide more small business aid, money for states and cities, and expand access to testing, among other things. The cases are rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that some local leaders are reinstating business restrictions.

“The longer Senate Republicans are playing this sad game is the longer they are denying families much needed relief from the covid health and economic crisis,” Schumer said.

McConnell and other top GOP leaders continue to decline acknowledgement of Biden’s win.  Instead they argue that Trump has the right to pursue the legal avenues available to him.

The election also has not changed the GOP’s views on any economic relief. In fact, congressional Republicans have long rejected a relief bill along the lines of the $2 trillion package Pelosi and Schumer are seeking.

Instead, McConnell has said that third-quarter economic news showing the unemployment rate has dropped, which he says makes a case for a smaller relief package.

That’s a bunch of B.S..

McConnell totally rejected Pelosi and Schumer’s call for a big economic relief bill.

“My view is the level at which the economy is improving further underscores that we need to do something at about the amount that we put on the floor in September and October,” he said, referring to the roughly $500 billion package that the Democrats blocked. “I gather [Pelosi and Schumer] are looking at something dramatically larger. That’s not a place I think we’re willing to go. But I do think there needs to be another package."

 But the only relief is that bill that McConnell was proposing and Pelosi shot that down because it would have provided little help to most Americans and US businesses.

Too bad it’s going to be more weeks before Biden is inaugurated and before the Senate run-off elections in Georgia.  If the Democrats should win those two run-offs, it would send the Senate to the Democrats, which could then send the needed help to so many American citizens.

Copyright G. Ater 2020