CT Blue

Dear Democratic Congresspersons:

Back at the beginning of the Obama Administration, Rahm Emanuel had this to say:

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

The Obama Administration, Rahm helping to lead the way, then proceeded to let a serious crisis go to waste.

Republicans don’t make that mistake. They are not going to let the corona virus crisis go to waste. A person who cared about other people would see this crisis as an opportunity to improve our deeply ineffective health care system, which is currently charging people thousands of dollars just to get tested; a test that should be free. But Republicans only care about some people, and they are using the crisis to steer money into the hands of the rich, the same way they use every crisis.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Republicans play the long game, and they are doing it again in connection with their proposal to stimulate the economy by temporarily reducing or eliminating the payroll tax. There are many ways to get money into people’s pockets other than touching the payroll tax. As Paul Krugman has pointed out, you can just give people money, which has been done before in the form of tax rebates. An even better approach would be to forgive student debt, which would enable those burdened with crushing educational debt to spend that money on other things. After all, if you can print money to save Wall Street, you can print it to save people.

Reducing the payroll tax means draining money from the Social Security Trust Fund, thereby enabling future Republicans to argue that the system is bankrupt and is a Ponzi scheme anyway, so it should be privatized. It’s the Holy Grail they’ve been aiming at for years, and if Democrats can’t see that undermining Social Security is the point of the proposal, then they have not had their eyes open.

So please, Congressional Democrats, do the smart thing and tell Trump and his minions to shove it, and pass a rebate or debt relief bill.

The latest: So far, so good.