One week before the critical Senate runoff elections in Georgia, President Trump put the Senate GOP in an impossible position: Approve an amendment raising stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000, or spike the amendment and risk political and electoral backlash.
Senate Republicans, for now, are choosing the latter, blocking an attempt to rubber-stamp a bill sent up by the House that would increase the amount of coronavirus relief given to individuals and families. They did so with good reason: The stimulus package does not take into account which individuals were financially affected by the coronavirus shutdown and which ones were not. So unless additional requirements are created to ensure that only those who need help got it, the government would have handed out free money to the wrong people while increasing its enormous deficit.
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However, many voters don’t want to hear about the deficit. They want the government to take responsibility for the shutdown and return to the public the time and money it cost them. That means there will be electoral consequences. And unfortunately for Republicans, the Georgia Senate runoffs are only about one week away, and this vote will be one of the last significant political events voters take with them to the polls.
This is a political disaster, and everyone but Trump seems to know it. He could have accepted the $600 figure, which his own Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, negotiated for, with the intention of pushing for additional relief immediately after. But because he wants to be hailed as the hero, Trump attacked the deal and ignored Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s warning that doing so would divide his caucus.
It’s been one bad political decision after the other. Senate Republicans may have had cause for fiscal concern, but they should have passed the $2,000 amendment. A measly $600 check per person is not enough to cover rent in most places, let alone food and utilities as well. And if the deficit is that big of a deal to Republicans, why were they so determined to bring back the “three-martini lunch” tax deduction in the recent pork-filled omnibus bill they approved?
Still, Trump should have seen this situation for what it was: a gift to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would love nothing more than to embarrass Republicans right before the Georgia runoffs. But he did not, because, as he’s shown time and time again, the only political capital he cares about is his own.
