This Is What an Opposition Party Is Supposed to Sound Like
By Jon Nichols
Reposted from The Nation, March 27, 2020
Republicans are using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to do the same thing they did during the financial meltdown of 2008: wage class war against working Americans. This time, Bernie Sanders is refusing to let them get away with it.
Employing a combination of moral outrage and devastating sarcasm, the Vermont senator shamed Republicans in a Wednesday Senate floor speech that ripped into them for prioritizing corporate bailouts while objecting to providing a measure of security for low-wage workers who have lost their jobs as much of the American economy has ground to a near halt.
“How absurd and wrong is that? What kind of value system is that?” demanded Sanders, as he railed against a Republican amendment that would have constrained benefits at a time when the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. Even in the midst of the crisis, the senator thundered, “Some of my Republican friends have still not given up on the need to punish the poor and working people.”
In a matter of minutes, during a debate that focused on just one portion of a huge measure, Sanders illustrated how an opposition party is supposed to operate, and what it’s supposed to sound like. Refusing to let Republicans peddle the nonsense that invariably serves as a cover for the awful combination of bailouts for the wealthy and austerity for the working class, Sanders pushed back.
It was a fight Sanders expected to win, but it was the way he fought it that mattered: He hit as hard as the Republicans. And he claimed the moral high ground—inspiring the hashtag #ThankYouBernie to trend on social media as the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II wrote, “#ThankYouBernie for pointing out the immorality of Republicans funding big business & trying to strip out the few things in the bill to help poor & low income workers.”
Former senator Heidi Heitkamp, a moderate Democrat from North Dakota, circulated a video of the speech with the message, “I may not always agree with @BernieSanders but this is @BernieSanders at his very best. You go, my friend!”
Whether Sanders continues his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination as he trails former vice president Joe Biden or whether he folds at some point, his speech this week signaled that the senator will remain a transformative figure in the politics of the Democratic Party and the United States.
The fight that Sanders joined goes to the heart of concerns about the federal response to economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. There is broad bipartisan agreement that Congress must move decisively to fund an urgent response. But there is a good deal of disagreement about how to respond to the economic fallout as states lock down in order to slow the spread of the deadly virus. There is a good deal of concern that the legislative process will be gamed by Republicans—and perhaps some Democrats—who are as inclined to bail out Wall Street in 2020 as they were in 2008. The wrangling over the Senate bill highlighted those concerns.
The $2 trillion relief package that the Senate approved Wednesday night does everything imaginable, and a few things that are unimaginable, for big business. The 880-page measure allocates $425 billion to create a fund controlled by the Federal Reserve, which permits massive loans to corporations. In addition, it makes $75 billion available for loans targeted to aid the airline and hotel industries.
The legislation is so friendly to big business that, even after it was reported on Thursday morning that a record 3.28 million people had filed for unemployment benefits, the Dow Jones surged because, as one analyst told CNBC, “the focus by the market now is on the fact we’re likely to get a historically large fiscal stimulus.” The wolves of Wall Street are excited by what economist Dean Baker correctly identifies as “the $500 billion slush fund that McConnell has made a centerpiece of the Senate bill.”
The measure would have been dramatically worse had Republicans not been faced with the reality of a divided Congress and the interventions of Senate minority leader Charles Schumer and his caucus, which fought for more than $100 billion for hospitals, $150 billion dollars for state and local government, $30 billion in emergency education funding, $25 billion in emergency transit funding, vital initiatives for small businesses, and anti-corruption initiatives that Schumer said were toughened with the aid of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Democrats celebrated a plan providing direct payments averaging $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for couples, as well as what Schumer dubbed “unemployment insurance on steroids.”