Americans should feel no more gratitude for President Donald Trump’s eleventh hour decision to sign the $900 billion pandemic relief measure than they might have for a vandal’s choice not to spray paint graffiti on their walls. The president’s behavior merely conforms to what might pass as normalcy.
To not sign it would have been not only catastrophic for the most vulnerable among us who depend on $600 stimulus checks, the extension of unemployment benefits and the federal ban on evictions, but would have set back the distribution of vaccines and the goal of keeping open schools and public transit systems, and preserving small businesses.
But threatening to walk away from it after Congress already passed it. This was not the conduct of a president seeking to change public policy, it was the sort of thing one finds on reality TV shows. That he spent recent days not on the phone urging members of Congress to change course but playing golf at his Florida resort reveals all one needs to know about the seriousness of purpose here.
We know the counterclaims made by supporters. They’ll point to the “pork” in the pandemic relief bill which doesn’t actually exist (the $1.4 billion government funding measure is the one with that and the two were merged for purposes of legislative action), or the president’s desire for $2,000 checks instead of $600 checks in direct aid. But even allowing for that, the chief complaint about foreign aid conforms to Trump administration budget requests.
Quite often, aid to other countries isn’t a denial of U.S. interests, it’s a cost-effective way to protect them. How much cheaper to protect human rights, spare allies from invasion or preserve trade partnerships than to withdraw support and risk a cataclysm that might require far more costly military intervention? Foreign aid isn’t counter to the administration’s “America First” approach; often, it’s a fulfillment of it. But then any opportunity to perceive people living outside U.S. borders as “other” or something not quite human is rarely a problem for Trump supporters.
As for the larger stimulus checks, Trump’s beef is with members of his own political party. Again, why wasn’t he working them hard weeks or even months ago when the House Democrats passed a more generous level of aid and Senate Republicans balked? His last-minute desire to mail out four-figure benefits reeks of Trump attention-seeking, not leadership, not even discernible political strategy.
Once Joe Biden is sworn in as president on Jan. 20, one imagines GOP senators will have even less reason to give ground. Whether something can happen between now and the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff election on Jan. 5 seems unlikely. And while it’s certainly been entertaining watching the two incumbent Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, support Trump’s every relief bill move like hostages suffering from Stockholm syndrome now smitten by their captor, it’s still hard to believe that, if re-elected, they’ll challenge Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on this issue.
If Americans have any gratitude to give, it ought to be for the fact that these days of turmoil for turmoil’s sake are thankfully coming to a close.
— The Baltimore Sun