I was annoyed to read an article as ridiculous as Alan Blinder’s “Will Congress Ever Break the Covid Relief Standoff?” in which Blinder puts the blame on Senate Republicans. In fact, the entire premise of the article is that “Senate Republicans resist passing a new bill, even though it’s needed and politically expedient.” But this is simply untrue, and shows the great lengths to which Blinder omits key facts in order to advance the narrative that the Republicans are at fault.
A few days ago, Senate Democrats declined to consider a $500 billion COVID package put forth by Senate Republicans. 52 Republicans (all except Rand Paul) voted to advance the bill, but without one single Democrat vote, the measure died. According to the rules of the Senate, having a majority that included nearly 100% of the Republicans isn’t enough to pass the bill; by invoking cloture (requiring 50 votes to override) they prevented the bill from even being debated. But did Blinder mention this at all in his article? Absolutely not. Instead, he describes how the Senate Republicans “resisted” passing a new bill, because not caving to the $3 trillion relief package offered by the Democrats is somehow an act of resistence.
Blinder continues this ridiculous idea, saying “progress has been blocked” by McConnell. How? The Democrat $3 trillion relief package version (the Heroes Act) contained “items that Republican abhor,” and this somehow makes it the Republican’s fault? And yet, in the very same paragraph, Blinder describes how the Heroes Act itself “was just an opening bid, which House Democrats never expected Senate Republicans to embrace.” This brings to mind two questions: 1) why are the Democrats crafting a bill that they willfully acknowledge they didn’t expect to pass; and 2) why are the Democrats given a free pass to craft a bill (they don’t expect to pass) at the high end of the spending spectrum, but when the Republicans craft a bill at the low end of the spending spectrum, it’s considered a “political stunt.”
Blaming Republicans for causing problems (resisting) because their bill, which the Democrats described as “emaciated,” did not have the right kind of Democrat spending, is outrageous. Such nonsensical hypocrisy and patent lies should not be tolerated.