March 23, 2020

Mitch McConnell’s Slush Fund Will Never Pass

From the Washington Post:

Did Mitch McConnell seriously think he could pass a bill that contains a blank-check $500 billion corporate bailout? Both parties objected when a Republican Treasury Secretary tried to ram through a $700 billion blank-check bank bailout in 2008, and both parties ought to be objecting now. To their shame, though, Republicans no longer care about this, even though giving Donald Trump a blank check is far more dangerous than giving George W. Bush a blank check ever was. Without tighter direction, there’s simply no reason to believe that Trump won’t use his authority over this bailout fund as leverage to help his friends and punish his enemies. This is the way Trump works, and everyone knows it. It would be insane to pretend otherwise.

I don’t know precisely how the bailout fund should be structured, but it should be kept very far away from Trump’s mercurial disposition. McConnell can’t possibly believe that Democrats will ever vote for it otherwise.

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