What the Trump administration and Congress do between now and Labor Day could decide the fates of the Trump presidency, the Republican Party, and countless millions of Americans.
Schools across the country will reopen (or they won’t). Congress will renew the $600 weekly federal unemployment benefits to families that run out July 31 (or it won’t). As temporary holds on evictions expire, millions of renters without jobs or government will be homelessness (or they won’t). States that reopened their economies too soon and saw hospitals overrun with COVID-19 patients will shut down again (or they won’t). Tens of thousands more Americans will die (or they won’t). You get the idea.
The problem facing the Trump administration and its congressional enablers is their own shortsightedness and classist economic proclivities. They have, as the overused expression goes, painted themselves into a corner. New York magazine’s Eric Levitz sums up the GOP’s dysfunction in a single, tidy sentence:
[A]s an organization whose top shareholders are reactionary plutocrats, the GOP has an inveterate distaste for using the power of the state to reshape economic outcomes in a manner that benefits working people — and an utter disgust with doing so in a manner that increases labor’s leverage over capital, however minutely.
Ideology meant they could not set aside the need to ensure people who derive their living from labor rather than from capital are properly incentivized to keep stock values afloat. “Worrying about employment incentives in the midst of a pandemic is even crazier than worrying about those incentives in the aftermath of a financial crisis,” writes Paul Krugman. But leopards and spots, scorpions and their nature, etc.
Levitz continues:
And now, with the CARES Act’s unemployment provisions set to expire at month’s end, Republicans are reportedly fighting to slash the incomes of 32 million unemployed Americans — at the peak of a pandemic, and just months before voters head to the polls — in order to combat the nonexistent problem of overly generous unemployment benefits reducing the national labor supply. Meanwhile, with as many as 28 million Americans at risk of eviction between now and September, McConnell is also reportedly opposed to providing housing relief to avert an explosion in homelessness on the eve of the election.
Trump insists any aid renewal include a payroll tax cut targeted, Levitz points out, at Americans who haven’t lost their jobs. But as a snake oil salesman like Trump knows, tax-cut elixir will cure whatever ails ya, from gout to eviction. Buh-leeve me.
A payroll tax cut that eats into support for Social Security makes Democrats uneasy, but in the short term, with so many unemployed anyway and in immediate distress, it should not be a deal-breaker. Levitz believes it is not the time for Democrats to debate policy. If they can get “$1 trillion in fiscal aid for states, an extension of existing UI benefits, another round of $1,200 checks, billions in funding for addiction-treatment centers, and the party’s other priorities,” they should make the deal.
Levitz believes “responsible” Republicans will set aside their aversion to redistribution and deficits to avoid a wave of homelessness and further financial collapse before the November elections.
Even if that happens, Trump is still determined to have schools reopen and parents get back to powering the economy for investors. Pandemic or no pandemic, 200,000 deaths or not. He wants “his” economic miracle back, his only argument for reelection. And if not, Republicans argue the country will reelect him in November based on fond memories of how things were in January. Seriously.
Odds are increasing that voters will pitch him out on his ear in memory of friends and relatives lost to his and his party’s dysfunction.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.