McConnell: the virus fiasco is all on Obama

McConnell the other day: Obama didn't leave us a plan so it's his fault.

Riposte:

Obama left you a plan that Trump ignored and an office devoted to dealing with any pandemic that he abolished.

And Trump had two years to build his own plan and his own staff.

He built no plan and organized no staff.

For the first months of the pandemic Trump said it was a hoax though everybody told him otherwise, and refused to take action.

McConnell today: Well, shucks.

The Republican Plan

Trillions without a murmur for corporations and not enough for the little guy.

And nothing at all for states and locales.

New York is the number one donor state. Kentucky the number three taker.

Cuomo to McConnell on MSNBC just now, New York every year is the number one donor state to the federal pot. Kentucky every year is a taker state. New York is a giver. Kentucky is a taker. The number three taker in the whole country.

New York bails out Kentucky every year, and has been doing it for decades. Every year, New York bails out the taker, Kentucky. Every year.

He keeps returning to McConnell's remark that money for the states for Coronavirus would be a repugnant thing, a blue state bailout, and states should just declare bankruptcy.

He says he advised New York state's two federal senators not to pass this most recent relief bill unless it included money for states and locales.

He says they passed it on a verbal assurance from Republicans that money for states and locales would be in a future bill.

And he says that as soon as the bill passed McConnell went public telling the states they should declare bankruptcy, there have been giant and plentiful federal bailouts of giant and rich corporations but there will be none for states and locales.

Cuomo to McConnell: Pass that bill. I dare you.

Noting it would require passage of a federal law to allow states to declare bankruptcy, that no such thing had ever happened in American history, and that it would be a clear signal to the markets and to the world that the US is in absolutely awful trouble, Cuomo dared McConnell to put such a bill on The Boob's desk and tell him to sign it.

He repeatedly dared him to do it.

Yesterday he pointed out that states taking this advice would wreak havoc with bond markets and leave hell to pay for future state efforts to borrow.

MSNBC just now.

McConnell to blue states: Fuck you and your Democrat voters and Democrat virus dead

McConnell says states should declare bankruptcy because federal funding for states that went in deep dealing with the virus would be a "blue state bailout".

Why he thinks it better that the state's creditors - mostly banks and funds, at a guess - should get stuck by surprise paying for New York's public services in this crisis than federal taxpayers, who would hardly be surprised, is a mystery.

Well, not much of a mystery, given his own words on the matter.

Blowing giant holes in the bond market with harmful echoes all the way down to depositors and wrecking New York's credit for a good while are better than adding a few tens of billions to the long term federal tax bill?

Well, sure.

McConnell is just seing this as an opportunity to crush unions, especially public employee unions, and their pension funds in New York, while forcing the state to lower taxes and services and regulatory restrictions on businesses and individuals, down closer to the levels found in red states.

And think of California. What luck! We can force California to reduce regulations on cars sold there, affecting the rules for cars sold in many other states across the country!

And that's just for openers!

Cuomo furiously just now on MSNBC denounced McConnell's remarks, pointing out that Kentucky gets more in federal money than it pays to the federal government, while New York for decades has paid more to the feds than it has gotten back.

Kentucky, he said, has been on permanent federal bailout for many, many years.

And not New York.

'The Marie Antoinette of the Senate': GOP Rep. King slams McConnell for suggesting states go bankrupt

Meanwhile Republicans stall and stall in order to delay and stave off further legislative relief efforts in DC.

Pelosi sidelines plan for proxy voting amid coronavirus, after GOP backlash

Trump's plan is to usurp the power of the purse

Trump to declare national emergency as Senate passes border security spending deal

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said if Trump declares a national emergency, he is "doing an end run around Congress" and Democrats will consider legal action to stop him.

McConnell says he nevertheless will support the president in doing that, and speculation has been that Trump insisted on that in return for his accepting the deal.

Nancy Pelosi suggested some future Democrat might declare some sort of gun violence emergency, though how that would be at all comparable I do not know.

Trump thinks declaring illegal immigration a national emergency enables him to use money appropriated for other purposes to build a wall he claims is the only effective way to stem the tide, though it doesn't and doing that is blatantly unconstitutional.

So some Democrat declares gun violence is a national emergency and then does what?

Newsies are speculating that it's more likely the supposed future Democratic president would declare a climate change emergency and then freely legislate carbon limits, gas price hikes, expanded subsidies for electric cars, and so on to deal with it.

Trump and the Republicans were right, by the way, to complain that Obama's creation of DACA was an unconstitutional usurpation of the power to make law, done when the congress refused to legislate DACA for him.

And this, but the way, is really "how democracies die".

Actual office holding political parties decide their agendas are much more important than the integrity of their political institutions, and so they bring out the wrecking balls.

And at least some of their popular supporters agree with them.

Oh, and if you think we can or should count on the courts to defend the constitution against agenda driven subversion when the court shares the agenda you should consider how courts have dealt with the Duce's efforts to discontinue DACA on the entirely legitimate ground that it was unconstitutional for Obama to put the program in place after the congress had refused to do it.

Far too many office holders consider the constitution less important their their party's agenda.

I am not saying agenda driven interpretation of the constitution or the law is always pernicious.

It is in place when there really is damn all other basis to decide among plausible but importantly different competing interpretations that best serve different or opposing agendas.

But this is just not that.

He's protecting Bozo and protecting himself from anger for not protecting Bozo

That's why McConnell won't even call up for a vote the same deal his senate unanimously supported last year.

Nor any other deal the president hasn't told him he'll sign.

He's not going to set up Trump to shoulder the sole blame for the shutdown by forcing him to veto a deal that would get it running again.

And he's not going to make himself a target of Trumpist rage by doing that.

Most GOP senators are right there with him.

By deferring totally to the Duce he makes his own party share the blame with Trump, but at the same time makes Republican efforts to blame the Democrats less incredible.

Not to mention that the GOPsters thus keep in tight with the white Nativist, Trumpist base.

And what, in the past, have Democratic senate majority leaders done in like circumstances?

What?

You say they did not stand in solidarity with their presidents?

They did not protect them and their agendas?

Really?