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March 24, 2020

Senate Democrats block the coronavirus relief package that they helped write

By Andrea Widburg

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." —Rahm Emanuel (actual quotation)

"This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision." —Rep. James Clyburn (actual quotation)

"Nice little country you've got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it." —Congressional Democrats (fake but accurate quotation)

Over the past week, a bipartisan group of senators hammered out the details of a phase-three coronavirus stimulus bill.  On Sunday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he'd had "two good meetings  ... with Secretary Mnuchin ... and I'm very optimistic that we can get something done."  He emphasized that it was important to "allow these businesses that are now closed to quickly re-establish themselves."  He boasted about "having good bipartisan agreements."

And the bill was indeed a good enough bill, with straightforward help for people negatively affected by the coronavirus:

 

 

Then Nancy Pelosi blew into D.C. and cracked her whip, and everything changed.  The narrative was no longer about saving American businesses to ensure that, after this panic is over, Americans will still have jobs.  Nor was it about immediate financial relief for individuals who have already lost their livelihoods, cannot meet bills, or have rising medical costs.

Now the proposed bipartisan bill was a "corporate slush fund" that didn't help the little people.  Joe Biden, woozy and mumbling, read the TelePrompter summarizing Democrats' new objections:

A furious Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) forcefully argued through Twitter that the Democrats' new objections were lies:

Kimberley Strassel also had substantive points to make about the Democrats' lies:

Armed with their talking points, Democrats refused to vote the bill out of committee on both Sunday and Monday, even though a "yes" vote would have allowed more negotiations.  Their weird, anti-American intransigence suddenly made sense when Nancy Pelosi submitted her own 1,119-page bill in the House.

Pelosi's proposed bill is not about urgent relief to save American businesses (i.e., employers) and get immediate financial aid to Americans harmed by the country's stoppage.  Instead, it's a compendium of all the things Democrats always want.  In an impassioned Twitter thread, Sen. Tom Cotton included a list of twelve non-coronavirus, hard-left demands Pelosi is making before she'll release Americans' money for surviving economic hard times:

Rachel Brovard has a thread that also details the demands Democrats are making as they hold hostage America's economic survival.  The screen shots give a sense of the depth of this 1,100-plus-page document.  Seeing it, you can tell that Pelosi has been sitting on the bill for a long time, waiting to unleash it when the proper crisis arrived:

None of these demands has anything to do with providing immediate aid during a short-term but potentially calamitous economic crisis.  Instead, the Democrats are using the crisis to reshape American politics to their benefit.  This is depraved.

As businesses fail and Americans go bankrupt, the Democrats think they've got Americans by the short hairs, and maybe, right now, they do.  After all, Republicans do care about Americans over politics, and they may end up doing whatever it takes to keep the country running.  However, elections will still happen this year when all the furor dies down.  That's when the Democrats need to get the electoral drubbing they deserve, so the fruits of their mafia-like tactics can be reversed.

We'll give the last word on this topic to Ben Shapiro, who's no Trump fan:

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." —Rahm Emanuel (actual quotation)

"This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision." —Rep. James Clyburn (actual quotation)

"Nice little country you've got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it." —Congressional Democrats (fake but accurate quotation)

Over the past week, a bipartisan group of senators hammered out the details of a phase-three coronavirus stimulus bill.  On Sunday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he'd had "two good meetings  ... with Secretary Mnuchin ... and I'm very optimistic that we can get something done."  He emphasized that it was important to "allow these businesses that are now closed to quickly re-establish themselves."  He boasted about "having good bipartisan agreements."

And the bill was indeed a good enough bill, with straightforward help for people negatively affected by the coronavirus:

 

 

Then Nancy Pelosi blew into D.C. and cracked her whip, and everything changed.  The narrative was no longer about saving American businesses to ensure that, after this panic is over, Americans will still have jobs.  Nor was it about immediate financial relief for individuals who have already lost their livelihoods, cannot meet bills, or have rising medical costs.

Now the proposed bipartisan bill was a "corporate slush fund" that didn't help the little people.  Joe Biden, woozy and mumbling, read the TelePrompter summarizing Democrats' new objections:

A furious Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) forcefully argued through Twitter that the Democrats' new objections were lies:

Kimberley Strassel also had substantive points to make about the Democrats' lies:

Armed with their talking points, Democrats refused to vote the bill out of committee on both Sunday and Monday, even though a "yes" vote would have allowed more negotiations.  Their weird, anti-American intransigence suddenly made sense when Nancy Pelosi submitted her own 1,119-page bill in the House.

Pelosi's proposed bill is not about urgent relief to save American businesses (i.e., employers) and get immediate financial aid to Americans harmed by the country's stoppage.  Instead, it's a compendium of all the things Democrats always want.  In an impassioned Twitter thread, Sen. Tom Cotton included a list of twelve non-coronavirus, hard-left demands Pelosi is making before she'll release Americans' money for surviving economic hard times:

Rachel Brovard has a thread that also details the demands Democrats are making as they hold hostage America's economic survival.  The screen shots give a sense of the depth of this 1,100-plus-page document.  Seeing it, you can tell that Pelosi has been sitting on the bill for a long time, waiting to unleash it when the proper crisis arrived:

None of these demands has anything to do with providing immediate aid during a short-term but potentially calamitous economic crisis.  Instead, the Democrats are using the crisis to reshape American politics to their benefit.  This is depraved.

As businesses fail and Americans go bankrupt, the Democrats think they've got Americans by the short hairs, and maybe, right now, they do.  After all, Republicans do care about Americans over politics, and they may end up doing whatever it takes to keep the country running.  However, elections will still happen this year when all the furor dies down.  That's when the Democrats need to get the electoral drubbing they deserve, so the fruits of their mafia-like tactics can be reversed.

We'll give the last word on this topic to Ben Shapiro, who's no Trump fan: