Bernie Sanders Is Fighting for a $2,000 Check for You on the Senate Floor
By David Sirota, Jacobin
30 December 20
Bernie Sanders is prepared to fight to win $2,000 survival checks for all.
While Senate Democrats were prepared to do nothing to challenge Mitch
McConnell, Sanders is pledging to filibuster a Pentagon veto override to
provide real help for millions of Americans struggling to survive.
For most of the last few decades, budget standoffs in Washington tended to
follow the same script: Republicans threatened to block some domestic
spending bill or fully shut down the government unless Democrats agreed to
let the GOP own the libs with something bad like a JPMorgan giveaway, a tax
break for the rich, or a draconian cut to a social program.
When Democrats controlled Congress, they never mustered the courage to
respond with their own version of the same shrewd tactics. Even toward the
end of the Bush era when the Iraq War was deeply unpopular, they never made
a serious attempt to hold up a bloated GOP-written Pentagon bill in order to
try to get their way on a progressive initiative.
But at the end of one of the worst years in recent history, it seems things
are changing.
In a long overdue script-flipping move, Sen. Bernie Sanders is now moving to
halt a major defense bill until and unless Senate Republican Leader Mitch
McConnell allows a full vote on legislation to give millions of starving
Americans $2,000 in emergency aid. That legislation passed the House
yesterday over opposition from a majority of House Republicans, who tried
their best to deny their own constituents much-needed aid.
Now the bill is in McConnell's hands, and Sanders is pulling a McConnell on
McConnell. He is imperiling the GOP boss's top priority - the defense bill
that authorizes pay increases for soldiers, military training, new weapons
systems, while also complicating attempts to draw down troops deployed in
Afghanistan. That McConnell-backed legislation could be stalled unless he
agrees to Sanders' demands and stops obstructing a progressive priority.
The Vermont independent appears ready to play hardball: He is doing his best
impression of Marc Maron's cameo in Almost Famous, effectively screaming
"lock the gates!" and threatening to force Senate Republicans to remain in
Washington, rather than flee while the country withers. The American
Prospect reports:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), with the backing of the Senate Democratic
caucus, is prepared to make life miserable for Senate Republicans if they do
not put a clean vote on the floor to increase one-time emergency payments to
most Americans approved in the recent COVID relief package from $600 to
$2,000.
Sanders has the procedural means at his disposal to keep the Senate in
session all the way to New Year's Day, inconveniencing Senators of both
parties, particularly the incumbent Republicans from Georgia, who are in
their final full week of campaigning for runoff elections on January 5..
The Senate operates on the principle of unanimous consent. It's not
impossible to get things done if one Senator objects, but it's quite a bit
slower. The majority needs to hold votes and waste time to muscle past an
objecting Senator. For this reason, Sanders can prevent quick passage of the
defense bill override, the only thing McConnell really wants to accomplish
in the last week of the Senate session.
This ramps up pressure on McConnell to just hold a vote on the $2,000
checks. Senators don't want to be stuck in Washington on New Year's Eve or
New Year's Day if they can prevent it.
It is hard to predict the outcome here. The Prospect notes that McConnell
can deploy some nasty countermeasures of his own that could complicate
things. Meanwhile, Sanders may currently have support from liberal stalwarts
such as Ed Markey - but Democrats have traditionally played the feckless
Washington Generals to McConnell's Globetrotters.
In particular, they have been loath to stand up to Republicans fraudulent
accusations of sedition and their propagandistic demands to "support the
troops" whenever anyone so much as questions military spending. Indeed,
rank-and-file Democratic politicians in Washington typically surrender the
moment any Republican waves a flag in defense of a military budget so
bloated that even professional auditors cannot adequately assess its books.
Has the party suddenly found some intestinal fortitude? We're about to find
out.
Of course, up until this point, Democratic congressional leaders have
embarrassed themselves, allowing Joe Biden's ancient austerity ideology and
Kamala Harris's sudden silence to convince them to avoid driving a harder
bargain with McConnell, even as Republican president Donald Trump gave them
political cover to demand more.
Relegated to the sidelines as Democratic leaders were willing to accept
another middle finger from McConnell, Sanders did what I saw him routinely
do when I worked for him in the House 20 years ago and what he's
successfully done his entire career: He reached across the aisle to find an
unlikely Republican ally (in this case Sen. Josh Hawley) to forge a
left-right coalition against a corrupt center that was all too happy to tell
America "let them eat cake" during an economic crisis.
Though Sanders has always been dishonestly derided by critics as an
unserious policymaker and tactician, this is his patented maneuver that he's
pulled off over and over again. This time around, he is bolstered by a crop
of younger House progressives who have been willing to both demand $2,000
checks and question the Pentagon budget. And his brinksmanship has already
proved far more successful than anything Democratic leaders were willing to
try, insofar as the Sanders-Hawley alliance helped create the political
pressure for at least $600 checks rather than nothing.
No doubt, the ultimate outcome here is important - the difference between
$600 and $2,000 is a make-or-break, life-and-death difference for millions
of people struggling to avoid starvation, eviction and medical bankruptcy.
But Sanders' gambit is a potential sea change moment in contemporary
politics. For once, Republicans are being put in a tough spot to try to
simultaneously justify rejecting a wildly popular proposal for direct
domestic aid while rubber-stamping policies that allow for hundreds of
billions of dollars of Pentagon spending - and they have to try to somehow
rationalize that insanity during a pandemic and economic emergency.
As a chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House and then as
ranking member of the Budget Committee in the Senate, Sanders has spent
decades trying to indict the immorality of federal policies that expand the
war machine while skimping on basic human needs. For the most part, his
crusade generated eye rolls, sighs, and chuckles from the Washington media
and the professional political classes of both parties.
But as Sanders now threatens to lock the gates, nobody is laughing.
