For most of the duration of the pandemic in 2020, Sen. Mitch McConnell held out on agreeing to COVID-19 relief. The House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act in May 2020, a follow-up to the CARES Act passed in March. It then unilaterally compromised with a $2.2 trillion version of the bill it passed in October, and McConnell continued to refuse to bring to the Senate floor. Finally, in December when he was fighting to keep two Senate seats in Georgia and his majority (ultimately unsuccessfully), he relented and allowed a stripped down package to help struggling Americans.
Throughout, McConnell was refusing to agree to sending support to state and local governments that were facing both rising costs for emergency services in the pandemic and reduced revenue because of lockdowns. He called such aid proposals "blue state bailouts" and said he preferred they "use the bankruptcy route." McConnell backed off of that kind of rhetoric fairly quickly when the backlash grew, but he also continued to link any state and local aid to a poison pill he absolutely refused to back down from—a liability shield that would have kept businesses, schools, and universities from facing lawsuits for putting employees or the public at risk of catching COVID-19.
Now that state, local, tribal, and municipal governments have finally received that aid thanks to President Joe Biden and the new Democratic Senate majority, McConnell is still bitching about it. Even to the point of telling his home state that if he'd had his way, they'd have gotten nothing. In doing so, he's making a big admission: All that help is thanks to the Democrats. "I was astonished to see the new administration recommend that we spend $2 trillion more," he told a group in Kentucky Tuesday. "Well, it passed on a straight party-line vote. Not a single member of my party voted for it." It was actually $1.9 trillion, but the rest is true.
"So you’re going to get a lot more money," he added. "I didn't vote for it, but you're going to get a lot more money." He continued, "Cities and counties in Kentucky will get close to [$700] or $800 million. If you add up the total amount that will come into our state, $4 billion. That's twice what we sent in last year." So much for the "blue state" bailout, huh?
This was said in the vein of a threat. "[M]y advice to members of the legislature and others―local officials―is to spend it wisely, because hopefully this windfall doesn't come along again," McConnell concluded. This spending, he said, would lead to inflation and that it's the reason there's "difficulty of getting people back to work."
He wasn't saying he hopes there's never another pandemic requiring this help. He's saying he wants to be back in control where he can make sure it never happens again. No more help for Kentucky is a strange way of justifying his opposition to things like Biden's infrastructure plans.
It's also a strange way to gain support back home, telling people that they can thank Democrats for saving them. But Democrats were happy to take it!
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