President Trump’s COVID diagnosis is cruelly ironic, coming as it does just as the president and Senate Republicans have decided to impede a national COVID and economic recovery bill and instead push through an unprecedented Supreme Court opening immediately before the election.
One can only hope for the president’s speedy recovery. But Donald Trump’s own decisions mean that recovery hopes are quickly fading for the tens of millions of Americans caught in the trap of the growing second wave of coronavirus and the worst economy since the Great Depression.
The faltering economy continues to weaken, with real unemployment over 11%, with as many as 26 million Americans still jobless. A jobs report late last week found that the economy has at least 11 million fewer jobs now than at the end of last year, a far bigger jobs loss than even the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
Meanwhile, a second wave of coronavirus is killing nearly a thousand Americans each week. COVID cases have risen in 33 states in the last month and more than a dozen states have reported increased hospitalizations in every region of the country as part of a “ominous national trend.” Already, 7.5 million Americans have contracted COVID, and more than 210,000 have been killed.
Normally reserved Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has become uncharacteristically blunt, telling Congress recently that economic recovery “will depend on keeping the virus under control, and on policy actions taken at all levels of government.” Powell has specifically urged passage of a long-delayed congressional economic stimulus and COVID relief package.
But in more than three months since House Democrats passed comprehensive economic and COVID recovery legislation, Trump and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have failed to enact a robust economic relief and stimulus package.
Never mind that polls show almost 90% of Americans want Congress to pass a stimulus package this fall to save the faltering economy. And never mind that unemployment has run out for tens of millions of workers who are jobless through no fault of their own, and that assistance to small businesses has dried up, with record small business closures. They can all wait.
For Trump, McConnell and 51 other Senate Republicans, ideology seems more important than saving lives, American jobs, small businesses and family incomes. How do we know this? Because less than three days after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump and McConnell declared they were going to break their own promises and push through a new Supreme Court nominee.
That’s right, more than three months and still no action for a COVID and economic relief bill to help America’s small businesses, workers, families and health. But it took less than three days for Trump and Senate Republicans to decide to force another right-wing justice onto the Supreme Court.
Legislation Senate Republicans coughed up in mid-September was just a political ploy, since it was less than half the size and scope of the bill the White House and Congressional Republicans had themselves proposed in August. The bill lacked funds for food assistance for children, contained no money for families evicted from their homes, gave no funding to promote smooth administration of the November elections, and lacked assistance to make sure the 2020 Census doesn’t miss tens of millions of people.
The Republican hypocrisy of forcing an unprecedented vote on a Supreme Court vacancy within weeks of a presidential election would be breathtaking under any circumstances. In the midst of the unaddressed COVID and economic crisis, it amounts to political malfeasance and dereliction of duty.
In February of 2016, after Justice Antonin Scalia died, McConnell said: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” More than a dozen other Republican Senators are also on the record saying they would not support nomination during an election year, even though Scalia died almost nine months before election day 2016, while Ginsburg died less than two months before the 2020 election.
Already, more than 12 million Americans are projected to lose health care insurance by the end of 2020 because of massive unemployment. But if Trump’s nominee is confirmed for the Supreme Court, it is likely a far-right dominated court would overturn the Affordable Care Act, taking away health care from 20 or 30 million more Americans.
Trump and Senate Republicans have purposely turned their backs on tens of millions of American families and millions of small businesses being whipsawed by a failing economy, loss of health care and the COVID crisis. This Republican cynicism and cruelty is unconscionable. But American voters will have their own response to Republicans, and very soon.
Bledsoe is strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute. He served as a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives, Senate Finance Committee and Clinton White House.