(TheLibertyRevolution.Com)- Democrats initially balked at the Republican’s proposal for a fourth economic stimulus bill, because they were pushing for funding for state and local governments that are struggling badly.
In the end, the Republicans won out, as there was no funding for those local governments included in the $484 billion bill that is set to replenish two popular small business loan programs, plus add funding to hospitals and beef up coronavirus testing.
While leaders of many cities throughout the country have predicted massive budget shortfalls this year — which would result in personnel, programs and services being cut — the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate doesn’t believe the federal government should bail them out.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republicans aren’t interested in “revenue replacement for state governments” or for “solving their pension problems.”
McConnell said Democrats were trying to get the federal government to bail out local and state governments, in spite of these leaders making bad decisions related to expensive debt such as public pension obligations.
During a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, McConnell said:
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available. My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.”
Democrats quickly fired back at McConnell on Wednesday, with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo saying it was “one of the dumb statements of all time.”
Talking to his brother, Chris Cuomo, on CNN Wednesday night, Andrew Cuomo said:
“Mitch McConnell, they’re talking about bringing back the economy and then he says states should declare bankruptcy. How does that help the national economy, states should declare bankruptcy? He then says this is a bailout to the blue states, which was a really offensive statement.”
McConnell is unphased by those comments and other critical ones. He said he would expect “finger pointing” over main issues and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic to be talking points as November’s general election draws near.
“It will dominate the campaign,” he said. “The Democrats, of course, will be on the attack against the president, saying ‘you should have done this,’ or ‘you should have done that.’ I do think the coronavirus has completely redefined the landscape of the fall elections.
“We’ve all been working hard. We’ve been able, for the most part, to govern on a bipartisan basis so far. I would look for that to break down as the campaigns heat up and the finger pointing begins.”
Later on Wednesday, McConnell also shot down claims by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Republicans didn’t want to include funding for coronavirus testing or aid for hospitals in the latest stimulus bill, saying:
“She’s claiming they were only interested in hospitals and testing. That’s not correct. What they really wanted to do was to pass legislation to send money down to state and local governments. And what I said is we’re not going to do that. We are going to wait and take a pause. We are going to assess the future damage to the country by adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt.”
