Republicans are going to try to drown the economy – By Ryan Cooper (The Week) / Sept 10 2020
After a campaign season lasting what seems like approximately 20,000 years, the actual election is coming up in less than two months. It has been clear for weeks that the economy is slowly stalling out well short of full employment, and tens of millions of people are falling into destitution because they either were not eligible for the first rounds of pandemic relief, or fell through the cracks in the bureaucracy, or have burned through their savings now that the programs are over.
The best thing the Republican Party could do for its president’s re-election campaign now would be to take Democrats up on their offer for trillions in additional rescue dollars. Yet Republicans are largely resisting — the latest offer from Senate Republicans is only half the size of the one from weeks ago, and it is not at all clear many of them would actually vote for it. If Joe Biden wins the election, which appears likely, prepare for a tsunami of crocodile tears about spending and the national debt from the GOP. They will attempt to make his presidency a failure by throttling the economy.
There are probably two things going on with Republicans here. First is an actual ideological commitment to austere political morals — the belief that government should be strict, cold, and rigorous towards (most of) its citizens. The state should not be in the business of handing out comfy universal benefits or making the lives of the masses better, it should be disciplining and controlling them — specifically by forcing them to work making profits for capitalists.
Continue to article: https://theweek.com/articles/936573/republicans-are-going-try-drown-economy
