While the president is scrambling to brand peaceful protesters as anarchists, the real chaos in Washington DC continues. There, Republicans in Congress are struggling to come to an agreement with the White House over another COVID relief bill.
The major point of contention: unemployment benefits. Some Republicans have slammed unemployment expansion as rewarding people for not working. Others defend the program as important for keeping the spirits of unemployed working-class Americans high. As many Congressional Republicans know, the election could hinge on their ability to pass a relief bill for struggling workers.
One could hardly fashion a more trying election year for an incumbent party. The country faces triple crises of COVID-19, a looming economic recession and widespread protests over police brutality. This has placed the GOP in the unenviable position of appeasing a dissatisfied electorate while appealing to their base. National polls show they’re largely failing to capture the support of voters across the country.
Even in some areas that were thought to be sewn up for the Republicans, like Georgia and Texas, some political handicappers are predicting that Democrats might see an electoral upset. As such, some Republican strategists are now in triage mode. For them, a defeat in November might seem inevitable. What they want to avoid now is a 2008 situation, where they lose the White House and Congress.
Negotiations between top Congressional Republicans and the White House have been described as “unfocused”. The White House didn’t come equipped with a strict list of policy goals, instead offering up a promise to include a payroll tax cut in the bill. They scrapped this, as many Republicans balk at the idea of rolling back taxes while increasing federal spending.
In fact, the massive demand for increases in federal spending is what has paralyzed many in Washington. For decades, Republicans have been the party that has tried to emphasize a huge deficit as being detrimental to the US. In spite of this, they now find themselves in a position where many Republican voters are calling on them to extend unemployment benefits due to the pandemic.
The average American is currently suffering much more from the economic fallout of COVID than the upper class. Simply going to the grocery store to buy vitamin supplements has become a dangerous activity. Many working-class Americans are out of work. The GOP needs to signal their support for blue-collar Americans, or they risk losing by a huge margin in November.
