The Bloomberg report offers this remarkable clue: A GOP strategist who has been consulting with Senate campaigns said Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden administration on federal spending and the budget deficit by talking up concerns about the price tag for another round of virus relief. The thinking, the strategist said, is that it would be very hard politically to agree on spending trillions more now and then in January suddenly embrace fiscal restraint. This comes from an anonymous source. But it accords with what all our intuitions and our understanding of recent U.S. political history tell us. Republicans almost certainly suspect Trump will lose even with a big stimulus and already hope to put an incoming President Joe Biden in a fiscal straitjacket, saddling him with the terrible politics of a grueling recovery. A big package now under a GOP president would make that harder to get away with. That’s bad enough, but the evolving strategy here may be worse than this suggests. The calculation is probably not just about avoiding the hypocrisy of spending big now and embracing austerity under a Democratic president. It’s also likely that a big package now would put the economy in a somewhat better position early next year, when Biden (should he win) would take over. This, too, is probably what Republicans want to avoid. Indeed, as Eric Levitz points out, if Republicans can scuttle a robust package now, that would hand Biden a “deepening recession.” If Republicans hold the Senate and can block big stimulus measures at that point, Levitz continues, “Biden’s presidency would be over before it starts.” We've seen this every time there is a Dem in the White House. Spending and deficit doesn't matter when Republicans are in control
I personally think Pelosi is on the wrong side of this one. Refusing any relief unless the government pays for daycare and then hazard pay for teachers is not going to sit well for long with those actually struggling.
Won't be the first time Joe was involved in pulling America out of the financial mess created by a Rep prez.
The Repubs in congress are truly anti-America. They pulled the same austerity card when Obama was in office, not because they cared about the deficit, but because they wanted to hurt Obama's economy. Who cares whether regular Americans are also hurt in the process? As I said, anti-American and anti-social.
