Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell floated the idea that the federal government should allow states to declare bankruptcy, rather than Congress send funds to those states facing massive holes in their finances due to the fallout of the coronavirus epidemic. McConnell left no doubt that this was a nakedly partisan move, referring to the potential of such relief as “blue state bailouts” and specifically identifying state pension programs (and their benefits to union members) as something he has no interest in helping out. Savage and spot-on critiques followed from many corners, from politicians such as New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo to Hot Screen favs like The Plum Line and Jamelle Bouie. Among other things, critics remarked on how blue states pay more into the US Treasury than red states, and get less in return; and that allowing states to descend into fiscal chaos will deepen the economic downturn we’ve already entered.
While McConnell’s opposition to the government providing public goods is long-standing, some have raised the reasonable question of why he’d pursue what would seem to be a strategy with decently high risks of backfiring against his party in this time of crisis. Philadelphia Inquirer Columnist Will Bunch laid out some explanations, including the possibility of McConnell using an eventual relief bill as leverage to gain political advantage over states; that the resulting pain may somehow be pinned on Democratic state leaders; or simply blind ideological belief that this is the right thing to do, no matter the circumstances.
My sense is that all three possibilities are probably at play, reinforcing each other in malignant ways. But the third is closest to the core reason why not just McConnell, but so many others Republicans as well, are on board with using this crisis to advance a broad anti-government agenda. A central identity of the Republican Party is a long term-opposition to government intervention in the economy for the benefit of the majority, twinned with support for as deep a privatization of American life as possible. McConnell, Trump, and other Republicans aren’t now urgently pressing for ideologically-pure measures simply out of inertia or a willingness to put a crisis to good use in service of long-term goals (more on which shortly), but because of a recognition, conscious for some and only intuited by others, that the coronavirus and attendant economic crash constitute an existential challenge to the meaning and continued viability of the Republican Party.
On the economic front, the GOP has for years essentially argued that the goal was, as Grover Norquist appallingly and unforgettably put it (and as Bunch reminds us), to shrink government down in size sufficiently to be able to drown it in a bathtub. Now, along comes an event that not just reminds us why a competent and well-resourced federal government is essential, but that demonstrates on a daily and escalating basis why the anti-government ideology of the GOP has always been bankrupt. The once-in-a-generation threat of the coronavirus is something that ideally called for long-term, methodical, and non-partisan preparation — a federal effort that in fact existed, but which was undercut by the GOP anti-government mindset over many years and then eviscerated under the Trump presidency. Likewise, the economic damage that has ensued — damage that deep economic inequalities have amplified — requires massive government intervention to counteract.
While Republican willingness to allocate trillions of dollars in economic relief superficially suggests an abandonment of principle when the chips are down, it in fact more specifically represents a doubling down on their general aim of protecting giant corporations and advancing privatization over public goods in this country. The vast $500 billion slush fund that the Treasury Department aims to dole out with no requirement that corporations retain workers or not use the money to do stock buy-backs; the small business relief that’s been gobbled up by decidedly not-small businesses; the undersize relief checks that have been delayed due to the obscene need to mark them with the president’s name: these efforts as a whole aim to enhance the status of the largest players in the economy while tossing peanuts to the little guys. The logical outcome will be a U.S. economy even more tilted to oligopolies and monopolies, and enervated by the destruction of small businesses.
As I noted above, we presently see the GOP applying the principle of never allowing a crisis to go to waste, and using it to advance long-held objectives. But this should not be surprising, or be seen as particularly out of bounds in and of itself. By their nature, massive crises that shake the pillars of our society and economy steer us in the direction of first principles: How do we best protect ourselves? Do we want to return to the status quo that made the crisis possible or forge a new, better future? The problem is not that the Republican Party is trying to implement big changes, but that the big changes they are trying to implement are destructive, anti-democratic, and bound to exacerbate the very problems that have made our current crisis so horrific.
The coronavirus crisis is an existential threat to the GOP not only because the pandemic discredits its bedrock attitudes towards government and the economy, but also because it simultaneously highlights the immorality of the party’s white supremacist core. Fighting the coronavirus has required mass public adherence to social distancing measures, hammering home the idea of our fundamental equality and interconnectedness; we can only get through this by all Americans pulling their weight, which reinforces the argument that being American isn’t about your race or skin color, but about your commitment to the greater good. Against this, racial tribalism appears as plainly insane. At the same time, the relatively high proportion of minorities in lower-wage occupations that are belatedly being recognized as essential has exposed an inexcusable prior denigration of such jobs and workers; this will rightly continue to send shockwaves through U.S. society in the coming months and years, a truth that cannot easily be repressed. In the face of the coronavirus, our overarching need for solidarity — a humanistic, democratic principle — is a dagger that reality has stuck in the heart of Republican racism and hyper-capitalism.