Hello, everyone! Welcome to the next edition of Insider Today. Please sign up here. If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please forward it on. SUMMARY: Republicans…
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the next edition of Insider Today. Please sign up here. If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please forward it on.
SUMMARY: Republicans are mumbling about the deficit and pretending they won’t sign another huge stimulus bill, but of course they will. Musk taunts California, flirts with Colorado. The Supreme Court won’t let us see Trump’s secrets before the election. That weird revenge-porn scandal is going to cost Democrats a House seat. Quarantine fatigue is real, and California’s in a tough spot. Yes, masks are annoying, but they work — too bad our president is too vain to wear one.
From left, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., appear for a Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony honoring the Office of Strategic Services in Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 21,2018.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Pressure is building for another big federal stimulus. This morning Fed Chair Jerome Powell — in that very measured, not-using-any-scary-words Fed-Chair-style way — practically begged Congress for massive spending now to reduce damage later.
Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi rolled out a $3 trillion relief bill. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act would give nearly $1 trillion to state and local governments to cover their urgent shortfalls, fund more contact tracing, and send another relief check to most Americans. House Democrats could pass the HEROES Act soon as Friday. (In the dismal tradition of ludicrous acronyms, the HEROES Act outdoes even the CARES Act.)
The Democratic bill has no chance in the Republican-controlled Senate. Majority Leader McConnell’s circle has derided it as a liberal wish list, and indicated they’re in no rush to act.
This isn’t surprising: McConnell is a good enough poker player to know that he should deride the House bill as much as possible for as long as possible, even if he’s eventually planning to negotiate a compromise.
What’s more interesting is that there’s a rising tide of Republican concern about the deficit. The April deficit mushroomed to $738 billion, by far a monthly record. Some Republicans say they want spending cuts to partially offset any new stimulus, or don’t think there should be any stimulus at all.
Republicans get very concerned about deficits when a Democrat is president, but rarely show the same concern when a Republican is, so it’s surprising that they’d get frugal under President Trump.
Given record-low interest rates and the economic catastrophe, economists pretty much agree that massive government spending is the best, and perhaps only, way to prevent a long-lasting depression.
This presents a fun political and philosophical puzzle.
The best thing for Republican electoral prospects in a November is a stabilized economy. The best thing for Democratic electoral prospects is an economy in ruins.
Yet we have the odd spectacle of Democrats pushing for massive federal relief that would almost certainly improve electoral prospects for Republicans, and some Republicans grumbling about it. Politicians in both parties are proposing to act against their own political interests to uphold their principles.
I suspect that both sides will end up supporting massive stimulus. Democrats will support it because they ideologically believe in it. They will also support it because they know that even if they do end up winning the White House, Republicans would certainly block large-scale stimulus by a theoretical President Biden in 2021, so Democrats should get what they can now.
And Republicans will shush the deficit hawks. They won’t go for the whole $3 trillion Democrats are asking for, but they’ll agree to a big bill — another trillion or two — because they know they can’t survive the election without it. — DP
AP Photo
Tesla CEO Elon Musk restarted the company’s Fremont, California car factory earlier this week, in defiance of the local county’s coronavirus restrictions. He also sued the county and threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters and plant out of California.
Now, sticking to the Musk-Trump Twitter playbook, Musk is taunting California by openly flirting with the Governor of Colorado.
Meanwhile, Musk’s bold move to reopen appears to have prompted California’s Alameda county to agree to let him reopen. Tesla and Alameda were close to a deal anyway — the plan was to open next week — but Musk’s Twitter bludgeon and defiance have bought the company a few more days of production and a lot of publicity.
