Trump Isn't JUST Fiddling While Rome Burns-- He Also Wants to Further Enrich Himself

Drawing by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday Mnuchin told reporters he and Meadows-- team Trump-- are not close to a deal with Pelosi and Schumer-- Team America. "We did try to agree to set a timeline that we're going to try to reach an overall agreement if we can get one by the end of this week, so that the legislation could be then passed next week," was all the reporters got out of him, other than blaming it on Team America for not doing exactly what Team Trump demands. He may not quite get the urgency for working Americans, folks who never who ran banks crookedly and were able to buy off the corrupt California Attorney General to avoid prison.

Progressive candidates across the country are extremely concerned that this move along faster. Earlier, Texas Democrat Mike Siegel reiterated that "We're in a moment of overlapping crises including a global pandemic, economic meltdown, climate crisis, and the fight for racial justice." He told me that in each of those cases, his opponent, Trump enabler Michael McCaul "is failing the people of the Texas 10th and the nation." As you know, at least if you've read DWT once or twice before today, Siegel is a progressive civil rights attorney squaring up against McCaul for the second time-- after he shocked the country in 2018 when he held McCaul to just 51%, cutting his normal win margin by 15 points, turning TX-10 into a national battleground race. Siegel recently penned a knock-down critique of McCaul's ineptitude on Covid-19, and he's expanded his coalition from 2018 to include major support from Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and the Sunrise Movement to finish the job this year. "McCaul is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he's supporting cuts in vital coronavirus relief to thousands of hardworking families across our district. We need automatic stabilizers, full expanded unemployment insurance, eviction relief, isolation support, as well as bold investment in faster testing and contact tracing," said Siegel.

Yesterday, reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Kristina Peterson pointed out that the Coronavirus Stimulis Proposals Aren't Limited To Cononavirus Spending. Team Trump is attempting to shove all kinds of priorities into the bill that has nothing to do with the pandemic. Peterson referred to the non-pandemic-related proposals as "bargaining chips for another priority. For example, McConnell introduced a $1.75 billion fund to rebuild the FBI building, something no one thinks is a good idea but TRump and his family, who fear that if the FBI sticks with plans to abandon the building, it could be bought by a hotel and give Trump's own hotel across the street competition. And you know crooked Republican businessman-- no one hates competition more than they do.

The Trump administration abruptly canceled plans in 2017 to build a suburban FBI campus. Instead, it pushed to keep the agency’s current downtown location, saying officials wanted it to remain across the street from the main Justice Department building, and the White House is pushing for funds to construct a new building. Keeping the FBI downtown would prevent the redevelopment of the site, which is near the Trump International Hotel. Both Democrats and Republicans have widely criticized the inclusion of the funds in the bill. “You have to be near the Justice Department,” Mr. Trump said last week. “They had sites way out in Virginia, way out in Maryland, I said the best place is right where it is…. So we have that in the bill. It should stay.”

McConnell also asked for $377 million for renovations to the West Wing of the White House and a screening facility. Most people prefer that money be used to help rescue ordinary American families from the pandemic that Trump has made much worse, only thinking about himself.

Hardball by Nancy Ohanian

There is also $29 billion shoved in there by McConnell for the military-- and not pandemic-related. "In the GOP bill," wrote Peterson, "Senate Republicans included $29 billion for the Defense Department, including $686 million for F-35 jet fighters, $283 million for Apache AH-64 attack helicopters, $1 billion for maritime surveillance aircraft, $1.5 billion for four expeditionary medical ships and $49 million for sonar buoys that can track objects underwater. In some instances, the bill replenishes Defense Department funds that were redirected in previous years by the administration to help build the wall along the border with Mexico. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-OK) has said that while the stimulus bill isn’t the ideal place for military spending, the military needs every opportunity possible for rebuilding."

Pelosi also put some items in the bill that aren't, strictly speaking, pandemic-related. She wants to repeal the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction for 2020 and 2021. "In their 2017 tax overhaul," explained Peterson, "Republicans placed a $10,000 cap on the amount of state and local taxes that taxpayers can deduct from federal taxable income. Governors of high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey want Congress to eliminate the cap. Doing so would help their constituents, make it easier for them to raise state and local taxes and reduce incentives for people to move to lower-taxed states. Repealing that limit would also deliver direct tax cuts to high-income households, and the top 1% of households would get 57% of the benefits, according to the Tax Policy Center. “We need to cushion the blow of this virus. The SALT cap hurts people affected by the virus,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in New York last month. “It hurts so many of the metropolitan areas like New York.”

A marijuana provision made it into the Democratic bill as well and Trump wants it removed. "The provision would protect financial institutions that serve marijuana businesses in states where the substance is legal," explained Peterson. "Federally insured depository institutions are prohibited from offering financial services to such businesses because pot is illegal under federal law, forcing the companies to deal primarily in cash. Supporters say the proposal would make it easier for legitimate marijuana businesses to conduct transactions without cash, making them safer during a pandemic. 'I don’t agree with you that cannabis is not related to this. This is a therapy that has proven successful,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said last week when asked by reporters about the proposal."

Riverside County southeast of L.A. has been hit really hard with the virus. It has the second most confirmed cases in the state-- 38,642-- and the second highest death toll-- 738. Progressive Democrat Liam O'Mara is running for a seat in the western part of Riverside County, the only Republican part of Riverside now. "Seven months into this pandemic, and five months past the beginning of the shut-downs," Liam told me today, "Crooked Ken Calvert has finally started circulating questionnaires to see where his voters stand on relief bills. Perhaps he has noticed that I am consistently standing up for ordinary people & consumers, and for small businesses, by demanding that the federal government step up and provide direct aid. Perhaps he has begun to worry that hitching himself to the austerity wing of his party is a liability when so many have lost their jobs, and may lose their homes and much else besides. Perhaps he is concerned that going to bat for corporate welfare for defence contractors while claiming that unemployment benefits make people too lazy to work isn't going to resonate with enough people during a literal depression of the GOP's own making. After all, one of the many lessons from the Great Depression we should never have forgotten is the one about consumer spending. Our GDP shrank by 33% because spending fell so sharply-- and that was with the added 600 in unemployment insurance. Now imagine how bad it will get without direct cash relief, and when millions have lost everything and have no way of spending at all. As far as I'm concerned, if Congress cannot meet its responsibility to protect the American people during a pandemic and depression, that government has lost legitimacy and should be replaced-- and our chance to do that is coming up on 3 November."