Mitch McConnell Led Senate Refuses to Pass Robust Covid-19 Relief Bill but Promises Supreme Court Nominee Vote
It has been 131 days since May 15 when the U.S. House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act to provide economic relief and recovery to tens of millions of Americans suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. It took the Senate 118 days until Sept. 10 before it voted on a paltry $300 billion COVID-19 relief package that failed to get any Democratic votes and fell short of the 60 votes required. However, within hours after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP allies showed their true colors by declaring that a Supreme Court nominee would receive a vote in the U.S. Senate before the end of the year if not before the election in just 48 days.
“Mitch McConnell, again, showed us he is more interested in ideological combat than in helping working families with real kitchen-table struggles by rushing to get a U.S. Senate vote on a new Supreme Court nominee,” said Frank Clemente, Executive Director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “He did this after failing for four months and counting during the pandemic to provide critical relief to families struggling to survive in this country as well as to teachers, nurses, bus drivers and other frontline workers employed by state and local governments. McConnell’s actions are not only a dereliction of duty to his constituents, but also the grossest form of political malpractice this country has seen in decades. Instead of rushing to ram through an ideological Supreme Court justice, he should be focusing on rushing a bill through the Senate that is a true compromise with the House, which will prevent millions of families from an economic disaster.”
FACTS:
- Billionaire wealth has grown by $845 billion, or 29%, since March 18, roughly the start of the pandemic according to Forbes data. Their wealth has increased by $680 billion, or 22%, since February 2019, the release date of the most recent previous Forbes annual report.
- From mid-March to mid-August, the collective work income of rank-and-file private-sector employees—all hours worked times the hourly wages of the entire bottom 82% of the workforce—declined by 4.4.%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
- 6.9 million Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, and 200,000 have died.
- Over 50 million Americans lost jobs, with nearly 14 million still unemployed.
- 30 million are collecting unemployment benefits (counting contract workers), up from 1.6 million a year earlier.
- Nearly 30 million Americans have gone hungry.
- 12 million Americans have lost employee-sponsored health insurance.
- Big swathes of business have shut down, including 100,000 restaurants.