This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated February 4, 2021
The pandemic and all the challenges that have come with it will still be with us for some time, but the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter. The first U.S. vaccinations began on December 14, 2020, with a goal to complete twenty million by the end of that year. However, halfway through that span of time, only about one million shots had gotten into arms.
Now, over a million vaccinations are happening each day. COVID-related hospitalizations are under 100,000 for the first time in two months. Both new deaths and new cases per day are less than half of what they were a few weeks ago.
Being diligent about preventing viral spread is imperative, so the further rollout of vaccines can have a greater impact. Similar to how much water is required to put out a fire, more vaccinations are needed if the spread of coronavirus is raging out of control.
This means the pandemic will continue to impact life. How businesses and schools operate, as well as how we all work — if we can work — will continue to be challenges.
More than ever, federal relief is needed. A restaurant in Brooklyn cannot continue to make the necessary sacrifices to help keep everyone safe, while trying to pay their bills and employ staff, with a small fraction of their normal business. Those who are out of work or hustling to earn whatever they can to get by, cannot be ignored anymore. They are not in these predicaments because they have not worked hard enough or because of normal changes in the market.
President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package is facing resistance from Republicans in Congress. They are insisting that it is too big. The price tag of their counterproposal is less than a third of Biden’s. They criticize Biden for not working across the aisle.
“Calls for bipartisanship are nice, but you cannot expect it from only one side.”
The fact is, the GOP, as they have done in the past, is not looking for a bipartisan compromise. They are looking for their way and unwilling to budge from positions that are lightyears away from where their counterparts are.
When President Obama took office in 2009, getting a stimulus package passed to address the 2008 financial collapse was his top priority. Although Democrats had control of both houses of Congress and could pass whatever they wanted, Obama insisted they listen to Republicans. The GOP proposals were drastically different and no flexibility was offered. Democrats wound up reducing the cost of their bill by about 20 percent in an attempt to gain GOP support. The bill passed with just three Republican Senators voting for it and not one GOP House member.
When Republicans won back control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, Mitch McConnell bragged about how, as Majority leader, he would stifle everything that Obama sent to Congress. In his final two years in office, Obama could only get 22 judicial nominees confirmed in McConnell’s Senate, ending his presidency with 100 vacancies that were purposely held up. As soon as President Trump was sworn in, McConnell hit the gas and confirmed over 260 judicial nominees during his term.
Similarly, with the Supreme Court seat that opened with Justice Scalia’s death in 2016, McConnell refused to give Obama’s nominee a hearing, keeping the vacancy open for fourteen months because he said it had occurred too close to a presidential election. Yet when Justice Ginsburg passed away seven weeks before the 2020 election, McConnell rushed through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, completing the entire process in two weeks.
When the GOP passed their massive tax cut in 2017, they did not ask for the support of Democrats, who were concerned about how 85 percent of the benefits would go to the top 1% and it would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit. Republicans passed that bill with not one Democratic vote and never pretended they cared to get one.
Calls for bipartisanship are nice, but you cannot expect it from only one side. In elections over the past three months, Democrats won both houses of Congress and the presidency. It is their time to govern and do what is needed to help Americans who are struggling.
