Pelosi Says What Will Happen If Democrats Win

Pelosi Says What Will Happen If Democrats Win

This is my stimulus update for Friday, October 30.

In terms of stimulus, I’m going to talk more about Pelosi’s letter and Mnuchin’s letter in response later in this episode, but first of all yesterday Pelosi was on Bloomberg News’ Balance of Power with David Westin, talking about the thirty-three percent annualized Q3 GDP growth, David asked her, hey, with this GDP growth, do you think maybe we don’t need as much stimulus as we thought, Pelosi said, this GDP growth is proof we need the stimulus more than ever because the positive Q3 GDP is directly related to what we did earlier in the year with the CARES Act and other relief measures.

Don’t want to read? Watch the video here!

And she basically hit on all her touchpoints, state and local, unemployment, tax credits, and more.  And she basically said if there is a Democratic sweep, because remember in the election of 2008, the Democrats retained the Senate and the House, Pelosi was speaker back then as well, and with Barack Obama’s election, the Dems began 2009 with the Democrats controlling Congress and a Democratic President in the White House, so in this interview yesterday Pelosi was kind of hearkening back to those times, and she said, just like in January 2009, that first week when the new Congress took office, they started work on the recovery act, which Obama was able to sign less than a month after he took office, I mean, could you imagine, a month, so that’s the kind of world Nancy Pelosi is envisioning if their is a Democratic sweep on Tuesday, she said, “We will have to have something like that from the start.”

So clearly if Democrats do sweep, there will be big stimulus in early 2021, but until then, it could be a rough road, let’s just say that.  And like I was saying on the live yesterday, what if Biden wins, Dems retain the House, but Republicans retain the Senate, well, that’s tough, folks, because just look at how reluctant a Republican Senate is to do stimulus with a Republican president weeks and days before the election, and an election that will break voter records in many places, if McConnell and the G.O.P. Senate is this reluctant for stimulus with a Republican president that wants stimulus, just image the devil of a time Biden will have with them passing stimulus.

As a result of this complete stalemate and complete failure of legislative processes, the best thing for stimulus is, frankly, for a Democratic sweep for big stimulus, if there is a Republican sweep — and that is an extremely unlikely scenario, the odds of Dems losing the House are astronomically low — but if there is a Republican sweep, in that hypothetical scenario, I’m confident that they will pass some small-scale, maybe scaled-down, one-off bills, but of course as we’ve seen the worst thing for stimulus will be partisan division, that’s not how this is supposed to work, ideally the parties are supposed to temper each other, balance each other, as they work toward compromise, but as we’ve seen the past seven months, it ain’t working out.

Pelosi also held her weekly press conference yesterday calling the administration’s approach to the pandemic “sinful,” and she called the letter she sent to Mnuchin “self-explanatory.”  And at this press conference she was asked what would happen during the lame duck session if Biden wins, why not take a slimmed-down bill just to get something out now and then do the rest when Biden takes office — and even that’s a tall order, like I said, if the G.O.P. keeps the Senate — Pelosi was asked, “If you are correct that Joe Biden is going to be elected, you’re still going to confront a balance of power with President Trump and a Republican Senate for the lame duck.

Would that not argue for you to take a somewhat smaller bill that the system can produce in the lame duck and then get the rest when Biden is President?”  And she basically said, no.  But at least she’s a Dodgers hater, right, the last question was literally, how do you feel about the Dodgers winning the World Series, and she said, “Lakers, Dodgers, I mean come on?  How about that?”

Now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about these letters, let’s revisit them, Nancy Pelosi’ s letter to Steven Mnuchin basically crapping all over him, and Mnuchin’s response to Pelosi, basically saying you’re a liar, liar, pants on fire.  I covered them yesterday, Pelosi’s letter in my daily stimulus update and Mnuchin’s letter in my life that I did later in the day yesterday, that was fun, thank you to those of you who chimed in there and contributed.

So let’s take another dive into these letters, as I said yesterday, basically the deal is Pelosi seems to have sent a letter at midnight, according Mnuchin, to both Mnuchin’s office and to the press, and by the press I mean left-leaning outlet Politico, so Politico published this thing apparently before Mnuchin even read it.  So obviously Mnuchin is angry about that.

So if you’ll recall from yesterday, Pelosi’s letter was basically, yeah, um, we haven’t from you, Mnuchin, about anything, we’re still waiting for your response on testing, tracing, crushing the virus, state and local, school reopening, child care, tax credits, unemployment insurance, and liability protection, while Mnuchin is basically saying, we did accept your proposal on testing in the updated HEROES Act, we provided minor comments on something that we think should be included in another bill, and we provided written and oral detailed comments about contact tracing.

And then Mnuchin goes on to say in the letter that Republicans have worked with agencies and committee chairs to send Pelosi detailed compromise responses small business including small business tax credits, rental assistance — that’s a good thing, we will need before the New Year — broad band, agriculture, and postal service.

Note that none of these things in this second list here, after testing and tracing, are things Pelosi specifically mentioned in her letter.  On the second page of Mnuchin’s letter Mnuchin does list out the things Pelosi listed out in her letter, and he says about them that the White House has provided reasonable compromise positions on that on these major pillars Pelosi has refused to compromise.

And of course he also makes another jab, stating that Pelosi, you basically shot down the really good Problem Solvers Caucus proposal.

He also said in the last paragraph that Nancy has refused to bring to the floor of the House stand-alone legislation on things like airlines, additional PPP money, and additional stimulus checks that could be paid for by using old unspent CARES Act money.  He concludes by saying, “Your ALL OR NONE — all in caps, mind you — approach is hurting hard-working Americans who need help NOW.”

So what’s going on here?  Either A, Nancy Pelosi is liar, liar, pants on fire, or B, Steven Mnuchin is liar, liar, pants on fire, or C, they’re both liar, liar, pants on fire, or D, if we want to think the best of Nancy and Steve, option D is that there is just some incredible communication breakdown between Pelosi’s staff and Mnuchin’s staff, and various congressional leaders’ staff, be that as it may, though, it doesn’t take a genius to look at this and say, second stimulus talks are pretty much at an all-time low just days before what will surely be one of the most divisive presidential elections in recent memory, and hopefully this election will be a reset in some way, shape or form, I don’t mean that in support of any one party or the other, I’m just saying that it is abundantly clear that something needs to change from what we have right now because as we’ve seen in these stimulus negotiations what we have right now is completely dysfunctional.