Thomas Hughes For a federal employee so bad at handling money, Mitch McConnell sure has a lot to say about how states should govern themselves. Senator McConnell has never tried much to hide his feelings of animus towards his colleagues across the aisle. If there is one senator who represents the descent into partisan mire in the US Senate, it is the Majority Leader who proudly told a sitting president that McConnell would not fulfill his Constitutional obligations in even considering that president’s Supreme Court nominee. In his willful ignorance of the Constitution, McConnell has proven time and time again that he has no interest in American governance, but every interest in ramming partisan preferences and personal opinions down the gaping mouths of stunned observers, whom, even after more than decade of his tyranny of Parliamentary smoke and mirrors, still find themselves surprised at his contortions.
Senator McConnell has always operated with a “take no prisoners” approach. The Senate, for all its peaceful tradition of bloviation and hollow debate, is now in a state of total war. When, in late April, McConnell’s office put out a press release dismissing the pleas by many state governors for federal help in plugging the massive expenses of fighting the coronavirus pandemic, and the inevitable budget shortfalls that would be created by the stay at home strategy advocated for by even the federal government, he showed his true hand as a classic, greedy, power hungry money manager. He should relax his ego and remember that the money isn’t his, it is the taxpayers’, and the taxpayers of many states are requesting relief through their representatives. There is widespread agreement that the states will take a collective hit after shutting down their economies for two months. Calling proposals for a financial relief or stimulus package “Blue State Bailouts” is insulting to all states, governors, and citizens, who are all looking for American politicians to think of the country as a whole, and as a nation, not as red states or blue states, with Democratic firefighters and teachers or Republican nurses and transit workers.
There is no doubt that many states, both “red” and “blue,” if that’s the kindergarten way of thinking about these United States, made hefty promises to their public employees regarding their pensions and benefits, and many will have to go through the lengthy and difficult process of figuring out how to make good on those promises. But with controls and oversight on state bailout funds, there is every reason to believe the states will use the money to help recover from economic devastation wrought by the pandemic. Perhaps the Senator should devote more time to making sure the money in CARES is actually being spent wisely, as House Democrats had suggested, with oversight, rather than letting the Treasury disburse the cash to big banks without oversight and then beg large corporations to give it back because it wasn’t meant for them. In presenting the third installment of the relief funds, when asked by a reporter how confident the public can be in a bill that was negotiated behind closed doors, Mr. McConnell responded with his own brand of Trump-style rudeness and contempt for the press. Now, with a president empowered to treat oversight mechanisms like personal servants, we find an inspector general inexplicably fired and the President’s allies receiving cash.
Senator McConnell’s blue state rhetoric only further divides the nation at a time of extreme partisan paralysis and during a health crisis that requires unity and focus. His shameful teasing, his power hungry behavior, and his blindness to his Constitutional role are all part of his legacy. Instead of musing about sovereign states going bankrupt, which current law doesn’t even allow for, and instead of doubting the accounting and taxation policies of some of the nation’s largest economies, Mitch McConnell should remember some key dates and numbers and ask himself where he got the gumption to criticize or doubt anyone’s accounting. When Mitch McConnell was first elected in 1984, the US national debt was $1.5 trillion. In 2006, when he was elevated by his peers to be the Senate Minority Leader, the debt had grown more than 5 times, to $8.5 trillion. In 2014, when the Republicans took control of the Senate and made him Majority Leader, the debt stood at $17.8 trillion, more than eleven times what it was when he began his Senate career. In his time as Majority Leader the debt has increased to more than $23 trillion, a greater-than 15 fold increase from 1984, when he joined the saucer, and took reigns of the power of the nation’s purse.
That doesn’t lend a lot of credence to the idea that the politician Mitch McConnell has much sense telling other politicians that he distrusts their ability to spend wisely. Those numbers aren’t measured in blue or red, they are measured in black and white, and the numbers don’t lie. Actually, the numbers are in black and red, as accounting goes, and there has been a lot of red under McConnell’s leadership. One could argue that it’s not fair to pin such numbers on one lonely Senator. But you’d be surprised at what one Senator can do, when they want to. Which lays bare for all what his favorite Parliamentary tricks are: cheap.
