Heather Cox Richardson - April 19, 2020 - Letters From An American
(On what the astroturfing of (anti) coronavirus-stay-at-home teabagger protestests is meant to hide)
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Still, the focus on partisan division is slowing down talk of the administration’s failure to provide the testing we need before it is safe to reopen businesses and stop the stay-at-home orders. Testing enables public health officials to identify and shut down hot spots; we need hundreds of thousands more tests a day. Trump says the states have enough tests to reopen. "They don't want to use all of the capacity that we've created. We have tremendous capacity," Trump said during a White House briefing. "They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that. They're the ones that are complaining." But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, the chair of the National Governors Association and a Republican, says this is “absolutely false.” Hogan told CNN today “It’s not accurate to say there’s plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That’s just not being straightforward.”
The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.
The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package highlighted the protection of big business at the expense of ordinary Americans. It expanded unemployment benefits with an additional $600 per week for up to four months and provided a one-time $1200 payment per person for those who make less than $70,000. It also provided for $350 billion in loans for small businesses to cover expenses. But those benefits are meager compared to the policies of other developed countries, which are covering 75-90% of the wages of workers affected by shutdowns. Unemployment benefits are hard to get in general as systems are overwhelmed, but in Florida, where the $275 cap for unemployment is among the lowest in the country, former Republican Governor Rick Scott deliberately made the unemployment application process difficult to keep the unemployment numbers low. “The system was designed to fail,” an advisor to current Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters. Now, “it’s a sh— sandwich.”
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The benefits for big businesses and the wealthy from the bill are clearer. Democrats had to battle to get oversight for the $500 billion allocated for big businesses, but when Trump signed the bill he issued a statement saying he would not honor the oversight provisions. He said the administration “would not treat spending decisions as dependent on prior consultation with or the approval of congressional committees.” Then we learned that Senate Republicans had inserted into the bill a tax loophole that will deliver a $70.3 billion tax cut in 2020 to just 43,000 individuals, 82% of whom make more than $1 million a year. The argument for the cut was to free up financial liquidity during the pandemic, but Republicans have wanted the change since the 2017 tax cut passed. The tax break “is so generous that its total cost is more than total new funding for all hospitals in America and more than the total provided to all state and local governments,” Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) said.
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