Americans should receive another round of direct payments from the federal government.
It’s good policy. It’s good policy. Americans deserve it. Our compact businesses need it. He is the chairman of the Federal Reserve articulate we should do it, and – against the wishes of some in his own party – the president supports it. So why don’t you get a check? Why isn’t it in the mail yet?
In politics – especially Washington politics where substantial money is involved – the answers are often complicated and convoluted. However, when it comes to stimulus checks, it’s very, very plain: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding them hostage.
Despite weeks of negotiations, and despite the White House’s demonstrated commitment to getting this done as quickly as possible, Pelosi is refusing to introduce a “skinny bill” that would fund another round of checks with no strings attached. He wants the whole thing to hinge on it over a trillion dollars unrelated spending – most of which would go to blue state governors who have dug themselves into a fiscal hole and forced out their residents with ever higher taxes and ever greater restrictions on their freedom. Pelosi and other partisan Democrats are upset that under President Trump’s tax code, reduced state and local tax credits mean that low-tax red states won’t subsidize opulent people living in New York and California.
“OK,” you might say, “but why don’t Republicans just compromise and give Democrats the help they need to get my check in the mail?”
Unfortunately, Pelosi doesn’t really want to compromise. That’s why House Democrats loaded their $2.2 trillion “Heroes Act” with enough poison pills that the Republican Senate couldn’t even consider it and the president would be crazy to sign it.
Democrat bill covers millions of dollars to get juvenile offenders out of custody, money to expand banking options for marijuana businesses, and millions more to create local databases to track “hate crimes.”
None of this has anything to do with the coronavirus pandemic, but other parts of the bill that actually do are even more partisan. One set of regulations is federal cancellation every voter ID law in the country. Depending on how you interpret the wording of the bill, it may as well to introduce California-style “vote harvesting” across the country. Under the guise of protecting people from the coronavirus, Democrats are tying aid checks to last-minute changes to voting rules that they believe will lend a hand them win in November.
This has nothing to do with stimulus or relief – it’s politics pure and plain. Nancy Pelosi insisted on passing a bill she knew full well had no chance of becoming law, solely to blame the president for failing to control the aid.
You could get a check tomorrow if Democrats sent the president a separate bill to fund the $1,200 checks that both parties claim to support. President Trump he repeated on Wednesday that he would be elated to sign such a bill. The only reason there’s no longer a check in your mailbox is because Nancy Pelosi thought it was more essential to win a political victory than to lend a hand Americans in need.
Madison Gesiotto is an Ohio attorney, former Miss Ohio USA and opinion leader for The Hill.
