Over the weekend, the Senate worked at a fevered pace to put together a bi-partisan economic rescue package. According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate had five working groups cooperating across party lines targeting the common goals of helping both the workers and the companies impacted by the forced economic shut down due to the spread of the Coronavirus.
Then, without warning, on Sunday evening Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi inserted herself into the mix and blew the whole thing up. Pelosi and cohort Chuck Schumer (Senate Minority Leader) turned the tables on the spirit of cooperation and instructed every single Democratic Senator to vote against allowing their bipartisan work product from coming to vote.
This led to the obvious results: A furious GOP and a terrified market. Even with the Federal Reserve swooping in try to save the day, the Dow dropped over 500 points, or another 3%. Pelosi and Schumer grabbed economic defeat right out of the jaws of victory.
Why? Far left politics, that’s why. Pelosi just happened to have her own 1,100 page bill in her back pocket and unleashed it on the public midday Monday. And oh, what a bill it was. It contained all kinds of far-left goodies that were totally unrelated to the current crisis.
According to Townhall, the Pelosi bonanza included the following demands:
Which leads to how this actually hurts former Vice President Joe Biden and helps President Trump. Since before Trump was even elected, the left has been describing him as a tyrant. Here’s what the Washington Post was saying as far back as December 2, 2015:
“Throughout history, when they appear, demagogues have been seen as existential threats to democracy. In The Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton warned of leaders who begin ‘paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.’”
There is no better time for a tyrant to make a power grab than during a crisis. A tyrant never lets a good crisis go to waste. Trump has resisted the power grab. Although Trump had invoked the War Powers Act, until today and despite calls from the left to do so, he has resisted its use, instead allowing the governors of each state to be responsible for their own needs while the federal government played their role of support. That’s not what a tyrant does in a time of crisis.
Donald Trump had the opportunity but did not go for the big power grab as we’ve been told he would for 4+ years. A tyrant (pronounce: tie-rant) is a person who rules with absolute power. In our government, a system of checks and balances, theoretically there is no one party or person with absolute power. But in a time of crisis, there can be. What would a tyrant do? The tyrant would wield power for personal or political gain at the risk of the nation and its people. And that person clearly was not President Trump. It was Nancy Pelosi.
Trump and Pelosi’s actions once and for all should dispel the talking point that Trump is a despot in waiting. “Everywhere you turn, Trump is tearing down the guard rails of democracy. Tearing down the things that prevent the abuse of power…” – Joe Biden, 6/11/2019
No, Joe. It’s now clear for all to see. The tyrant, the abuse of power, is on your side of the aisle and it’s Nancy Pelosi.
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But Pelosi hurt Biden in another way. Of all the demands listed in the Pelosi bill, the one that has been ignored but actually stands out like a sore thumb to me is the bail out of the Postal Service. Where in the world did that come from?
As per the 2019 Postal Service Fiscal Report, the USPS is $11B in debt and the “Controllable loss for the year was $3.4 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion compared to 2018. The net loss for the year was $8.8 billion, an increase in net loss of $4.9 billion compared to 2018.”
What does this have to do with Joe Biden? Think of the USPS not as your friendly mail carrier. Instead, think of the USPS as the “Public Option.”
In healthcare terms, the Public Option is a government run insurance provider that would theoretically drive down the cost of coverage. I know. It sounds great. But, according to Jacob Hacker, the Architect of the Public Option, it’s actually Single Payer in plain sight.
Because it can offer products at below market price and operate at a structural loss, eventually it will drive for-profit providers out of the market. The Public Option can then just wait for the right Administration or the right crisis to bail them out.
Biden has been pushing for the Public Option as part of his Obamacare expansion. As the need for the bailout of the USPS shows, government-run entities become fatty, wasteful political tools.
One reason the USPS is in such trouble is because of its massive pension benefit liability. That’s a political structural fiscal defect, or an “uncontrollable cost” that cannot be fixed except for a federal bail-out.
That’s what Nancy Pelosi is doing. Her bill bails out the Postal Service’s structural pension liability and takes the USPS off the hook for $11B. But while doing so, she’s proven once and for all that Biden’s Public Option is just another fiscally irresponsible, terrible idea.
