Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been holding COVID-19 relief hostage since for six months. His refusal to negotiate and his unreasonable demands have meant that struggling people had no choice but to try to return to their normal daily lives only to see the pandemic worsen. McConnell is just a responsible for tens of thousands of deaths as Donald Trump. His insistence on his "Free Pass to Tyson for Murdering Workers" liability shield will make him responsible for more deaths if he has his way.
Not even the abject suffering of the people of Kentucky will move him. “You hear the desperation in the phone calls: ‘I have to pay my rent today. I’ve done everything I can do. I’ve offered to rake leaves or mow grass or anything I can do.’ They’ve lost their job or the stimulus has run out,” Chris Bartley, associate pastor at a Methodist church in Pikeville, Kentucky, told AP. “I’m dealing with more mental health issues than I ever have in 20 years," he said. His church's food pantry saw some fall in demand after the CARES Act passed in March, but that's gone, and now "It's almost as much as we can do to keep up again," Bartley said.
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Gov. Andy Beshear adds: "We saw the first round of CARES Act funding really flow through our economy in a positive manner. … People needed the dollars. They spent the dollars. We saw businesses lifted up by those dollars. We were able to use funds to help people stay in their homes with an eviction-relief fund. Pay their utility bills so they didn't end up in debt." That's dried up because of McConnell. "We need people to not be Democrats or Republicans but to be human beings and do the right thing," Beshear said. "People out there are dying, People out there are hurting. This is the time to invest in our people and in their safety."
That's going to continue for at least several months more even with a vaccine about to be deployed, because it will take months to get it distributed to the whole population. Now that there is a vaccine, McConnell will have even more of an excuse for refusing to act. His real motivation will be sabotaging the new Democratic president because that's who he is, but he can point to the vaccine as the key to the nation rebounding and a lessened need for Congress to act.
That's why his majority has to end. He can't have the power over actual life and death anymore, because he'll always choose needless, preventable death just as long as it keeps his real constituency—the super rich—happy.
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