Watch What Happens If the GOP Keeps Ignoring Covid-19 Relief
Republicans are rejecting hard-learned lessons about the consequences of leaving a failing economy to sort its fate on its own.
Doomed to repeat history?
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
There is a broad national consensus that more stimulus is needed to safely shepherd the U.S. economy to the other side of Covid-19. President Donald Trump knows it. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell knows it. House Democrats know it. And economists across the political spectrum have said as much. Senate Republicans are apparently the only ones who don’t know it.
Just three days after torpedoing stimulus talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, Trump told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Friday that he wants even more relief money than the $2.2 trillion Democrats have proposed. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who favors additional bailouts, albeit a fraction of what Trump and Democrats have in mind, wasted no time crushing that idea, saying at a Kentucky event that a stimulus deal is unlikely before the election.