The Republicans are capable of passing a bill in the Senate if Mitch is willing rely on Dem votes, say 40 Ds and 20 Rs. He’s probably not willing, so the issue for Chuck is whether he’s willing to let Mitch shoot the hostage or give Mitch something big like the liability shield. Mitch can get 30 GOP votes for +400-600 and liability shield, I don’t know whether Chuck would go for that and I don’t know what the right thing for Chuck to do there.
The liability shield is a disaster and will result in a lot more death than we already have. All this handwringing about “shooting the hostages” is really dumb if your compromise is saving some lives through 600/month and killing tens of thousands of lives through letting businesses kill their employees and customers with no recourse for the family of the deceased.
I would argue doing nothing > anything with that trash liability protection clause in there. The one exception might be if Dems get election reform/integrity along with the UE money.
We should also note that in the event of a Biden win, Mitch’s incentives swing to inflicting maximum pain on people. Further relief at that point can only happen if the Ds take the Senate and are willing to ditch the filibuster.
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This is my take.
Experience tells us they will eventually cave.
The second one is obviously what the GOP is trying to achieve.
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It’s the second one which is why you can’t allow that to be passed. It will kill tens of thousands so some rich assholes get slightly more rich.
It’s pretty gross that we’re literally stuck horse trading lives. The GOP will only save the hungry/soon to be homeless if the Dems allow them to get millions more people infected.
If I were Pelosi or Schumer I would not cut any deal with a liability shield. Blue states can mobilize enhanced unemployment or at least eviction moratoriums, and Dems can straight up tell everyone they can’t be evicted so pay for food not rent. Vote for us and we’ll give you $600/wk retroactive for the whole thing in January, and only then will we lift the eviction moratorium.
Then charities can mobilize to feed the hungry.
Blue states would get through it, and the red states would probably choose mass suffering instead.
This saves the maximum number of lives, and as an added bonus, every single state on the map could be in play.
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It absolutely blows my mind that they are professional politicians and they suck this bad at politics. I get it, they are corporate-owned, soulless losers, but you think they would be better at it purely out of self-interest. They’re nothing if not power-hungry.
I’m predicting the bill will be $300/week extra through November and the liability protection clause in there. Nothing for election security. Same stim checks as last time. They announce it Friday. Let’s see how I do.
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They are acting purely out of self-interest.
Like how did they not learn from the Obama years that the President is ALWAYS held accountable for the failures of government? That’s like the #1 takeaway from the Obama years, with #2 being it is counter productive to negotiate with Republicans, ever. Were these dumb fucks awake?
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It’ll definitely go past the election and stop early in the lame duck, which is bad IMO. It’ll definitely have liability protection, which is awful. My guess is $400.
Nancy Pelosi is 80 years old with a nine figure net worth. If she’s not doing it for the power or (gasp) to actually make a difference, what the fuck is the point of being in Congress?
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My favorite part is Republican Senators AREN’T EVEN AT THE NEGOTIATIONS. The Dems literally are just there to make a good show of it before caving on just about everything like always.
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Can’t be repeated enough. They are negotiating against themselves when Mitch can’t pass literally anything without them. It is infuriating beyond words.
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Give them the liability protection, but say the liability protection is that the family can’t sue the company for infection or death. The tradeoff is the company just has to pay the affected person’s salary he or she had the day of the business re-opening for the rest of that person’s ‘natural’ working life. If the person who dies is 25 years old, the company is on the hook for that person’s salary for 45 years. It just keeps getting direct deposited into the heir’s bank account every pay period during that period. If the company goes under, it becomes the owner’s personal liability to pay that. Surely doing this would be less costly to the business than having to litigate class action lawsuits.
For a person who gets COVID-19 at one of these places but doesn’t die, the person and anyone living in the household at the time the business re-opened is automatically put on Medicare for life. The company where this happened is on the hook for some percentage of Medicare payment regardless of whether that employee remains with the company. Again, this is cheaper for the company than the lawsuits/damages. In no way should businesses be allowed to point a loaded shotgun at the front door every day that spins in a circle and fires wherever it stops when the door opens with no consequences.
All of that stuff I listed above is pipe dream stuff, so it’s more likely it’s better to give short term liability protection (2 or 3 months to test and rescind it when the disaster is obvious) and set a standard of when a company does become liable. If a company manages to infect 20 percent of its workforce, then that company faces a liability issue because it clearly wasn’t doing its re-opening safely. If 1 person catches it and dies, maybe not, since that would involve policing each worker’s entire life outside of the business.
I’d be most interested to see what would happen with the first lawsuit filed with liability protection in place. I find it hard to believe that some Congress law would give blanket immunity to lawsuits.
The most obvious thing to do is extend the $600, eviction moratorium, and put in $600 hazard pay in a clean bill. That should not be tied to something like liability protection, period.
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Why is your assumption the $600 is where they compromised? I think it’s more likely it will be something else.
Cmon man giving any type of protection to corporations to allow them to literally kill Americans so they can make more $$$ seems pretty evil to me and not something I would ever cave or take half measures on.
Yeah, but this is Congressional leadership gazillionaires we’re talking about.