Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appeared recently on Bloomberg TV to run interference for Senate Democrats’ decision over the weekend to torpedo a COVID-19 relief package, and to make a counterproposal in the form of a pork-laden abomination.
The former 2020 primary candidate, naturally, tried to blame Republicans for congressional dysfunction, sparking a none-too-pleased rebuke from Bloomberg TV anchor Jonathan Ferro.
“In this bill, there are checks for everyday Americans,” said the anchor. “The reason this bill hasn’t gone through is because of Democratic senators. Do you want to be the person that’s stopping people from getting their checks to meet their rent at the end of this month?”
Warren claimed Republicans are responsible for Congress’s failure to pass a relief bill over the weekend.
“The reason this bill has not gone through is because of Republican senators,” the senator said, “and because of a Republican leadership that pretended to negotiate for three days with the Democrats and then at the end of that time basically introduced their own bill.”
Warren, the unofficial media candidate of the 2020 Democratic primary, could not have been ready for the rightly skeptical reception that this dubious assertion received from Ferro.
“You guys can get this done,” said the Bloomberg anchor. “The only thing stopping it from happening is yourselves, on both sides of the aisle. There is no point coming on the TV shows today, on the networks, saying, ‘It’s the Republicans’ fault.’ Because you know what’s happening on the other networks? ‘It’s the Democrats’ fault.’ It’s all of your fault.”
In spite of the “both sides” element to Ferro’s rebuke – Democrats blocked the bill, plain and simple – it is a lot better than the ridiculous defenses that other journalists launched on behalf of the Democratic Party.
Congress’s relief package failed this weekend after Democrats voted it down, claiming, among other things, that it gave Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin too much discretionary authority over $500 billion earmarked for “severely distressed businesses.”
The new relief package proposed this week by Pelosi not only has a similar provision for “distressed businesses,” only in the amount of $150 billion, but it also gives the Treasury Secretary the exact same powers as the Senate GOP version to “review and decide on applications for loans and loan guarantees.” This all suggests that Democratic opposition to the Senate GOP bill was theatrical, and that the real idea is to cram some unrelated ideological goals into new legislation.
Pelosi’s “relief” bill, titled “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act,” would cancel the U.S. Postal Service’s $11 billion in debt and give it $20 billion in cash. It empowers the newly proposed COVID–19 Aid Oversight Panel to collect data on “corporate board diversity” for any organization that receives federal coronavirus aid – vital, lifesaving stuff, of course. It also requires that airlines fully offset their carbon emissions.
Glad to see we are all focused like a laser on saving the country from a plague and an economic depression.
