Those rascally Republicans — they somehow forced Senate Democrats to kill Congress’s COVID-19 emergency relief package this weekend!
Well, that’s what the New York Times editorial board said. Maybe someone needs to explain it to them.
“The Coronavirus Bailout Stalled. And It’s Mitch McConnell’s Fault,” declares the board’s headline. The subhead adds, “Senate Republicans are blocking passage of an economic bailout plan that protects jobs and wages.”
Democrats put partisan politics ahead of efforts to halt the coronavirus pandemic and prevent the collapse of the U.S. economy. This isn’t hard to understand unless you don’t want to.
Congress’s upper chamber was set to pass an emergency relief package this weekend. Democrats decided at the last minute to vote it down. They then made a counterproposal packed with irrelevant and ideologically charged items, many of which could even be called poison pills.
Those are just the facts. Keep them in mind as you try to understand the New York Times’s contorted reasoning for blaming Senate Republicans for the death of the COVID-19 relief bill.
“Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky failed to do his job this weekend,” the editorial reads. “As the economy spiraled downward, Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said he would produce a bipartisan bailout bill authorizing an infusion of desperately needed aid.”
It adds, essentially rehashing several Democratic press releases: “Instead, Mr. McConnell emerged on Sunday evening with a bill that would provide a lot of help for corporate executives and shareholders, and not nearly enough for American workers. Senate Democrats, refusing to play along, blocked the bill in a procedural vote on Sunday night. But responsibility for the deadlock rests squarely on Mr. McConnell’s shoulders.”
The New York Times’s knee-jerk impulse is simply to back whatever Democratic leadership says. But maybe just once, the members of its editorial board should exercise some critical thinking.
Its COVID-19 editorial was published a bit before 4 p.m. Monday, meaning the board had ample opportunity to review the Democratic Party’s counterproposal: the “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act.” Just one look at this abomination of a bill makes it clear that Democratic objections to the Senate Republicans’ proposal had nothing to do with worker protections and everything to do with holding the country hostage to enact into law a wish list of left-wing programs and goodies.
Worse still, the Times even parrots the Democratic complaint that the Senate GOP bill gave Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin too much discretionary authority to allocate $500 billion earmarked for “severely distressed businesses.” But the Democratic counterproposal has a similar provision for “distressed businesses” and gives the Treasury secretary the exact same powers to “review and decide on applications for loans and loan guarantees.”
Put more plainly, the Democratic complaints parroted by the New York Times’s editorial board are transparently disingenuous, intended as a means of preserving plausible deniability.
The New York Times’s slavish deference to the Democratic Party is nothing new, but this coronavirus editorial represents a new low for its board. Playing for a certain team is one thing; running interference for its worst behavior in a time of crisis is quite another.
The New York Times recently announced it wouldn’t be writing editorials as frequently. This would have been a great day to skip and spare itself some embarrassment.
