Mitch McConnell, SUPERGENIUS

This would be funny if it wasn’t going to cause so much misery:

With days to go before enhanced jobless benefits expire, the White House and Senate Republicans are struggling to design a way to scale back the program without overwhelming state unemployment agencies and imperiling aid to more than 20 million Americans.

The hang-up has led to an abrupt delay in the introduction of the GOP’s $1 trillion stimulus package. The White House and Democrats have said they want a deal by the end of the month, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested Friday that reaching an agreement could take several weeks, a timeline that could leave many unemployed Americans severely exposed.

“Hopefully we can come together behind some package we can agree on in the next few weeks,” McConnell said at an event in Ashland, Ky.

Part of the problem stems from a push by administration officials and GOP lawmakers to reduce a $600 weekly payment of enhanced federal unemployment benefits. The White House and the GOP disagree about how to do this, and talks remain highly contentious. They hope to release a proposal early next week.

By deliberately waiting until the last minute, McConnell will create a situation where a relief bill will eventually pass, but only after the UI benefit runs out as people start to make decisions about the election less than 100 days away, and Democrats will gain more leverage as soon as the benefit expires. AFICT McConell and the rest of the Republican leadership were high on their own supply about “declare everything open before the virus is suppressed and then do nothing” being a viable economic recovery strategy, and continued to believe it long after it had obviously (and inevitably) failed.

McConnell’s main strength as a legislative leader is his disregard for the noble lies that used to constrain the behavior of legislative leaders. It makes him a very effective obstructionist, and he’s competent enough about accomplishing things that are a high priority consensus for his conference, like judges and tax cuts. But when it comes to actually assembling legislation, to call him replacement level would be generous, and demonstrates the limitations of hardball as a one-size-fits-all tacitc. All of his anti-normative secrecy in advancing ACA repeal failed to make it any less unpopular, while it cost him the decisive vote of a senator who had no policy objection to it. He was nearly irrelevant to the first major relief bill, and on the second, his decision to take a two month siesta means he’ll get a deal that will probably be worse on the merits from his perspective and will definitely minimize the political benefits to Trump and marginal Senate Republicans who are already in a world of hurt. Heckuva job.