Outflanked XII: The Hoover Outflankening

Let’s check in on how those fiery populist firebrands in the Republican Senate conference are reacting to economic catastrophe now that they’re back in town:

Imbued with this powerful mission, Senate Republicans have returned to Capitol Hill with vigor: They are vigorously having catered lunch together each day, and then vigorously voting on a single administration nominee. They are vigorously moving the confirmation of a 37-year-old McConnell protégé to the second-most-powerful court in the country.* And then, on Thursday, they will vigorously fly home.

Go ahead. Allow yourself to feel comforted.

In terms of additional legislationthat might “support” a shattered nation, however, the Senate Republican caucus is on a self-described “pause” right now that is set to expire on … well, no one can really say.

“We’ve appropriated nearly $3 trillion,” Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander said. “It’s not even all distributed yet—for example, the $175 billion for hospitals, the second $75 billion hasn’t been distributed yet. So we should distribute what we’ve yet to distribute. We should examine what we’ve already done before we take any additional steps. I don’t know what the timetable for that is.”

It certainly doesn’t seem to be this spring. “From a caucus point of view, there’s a general sense that what we did in March was appropriate for April and May,” Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said. “It may not be appropriate for June and July. And this is a time, rather than just continuing to put more money behind the programs we think were the right programs to do for the two months we’re in right now, we need to have a careful view of what the economy needs to look like in June and July.”

The economy in June and July (and August and September and October and … ) will look like one with lingering double-digit unemployment. Businesses may have reopened, but it’s an open question as to how many “customers” they may have, especially as the virus won’t have been beaten into submission. The economy will still need the government to prop it up. The government, though, is starting to lose interest.

To the extent that there is any Senate legislation on the horizon, it’s legislative maintenance on the $2 trillion CARES Act. Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, for instance, was concerned about the tax treatment of small-business loans offered in the legislation. Elsewhere, though, he said he was “focused on reopening the economy” from now on and that the time for straightforward relief had passed.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, too, felt like enough money had already gone out the door.

“In macroeconomic terms, a number of economists are saying that we’ve probably lost maybe 30 percent to one-third of our economy. That’s about $600 billion a month,” he said. “Do the simple math on that. We’ve basically authorized total replacement costs on about five months worth of one-third of our economy.”

While Johnson said it was necessary to take a “carpet-bombing approach” at the time of the CARES Act, it “went to some people who didn’t even need it.” His primary objective, right now, is making sure that existing $3 trillion in funds is reprogrammed or redeployed to better match existing problems.

The appetite for new spending within the Senate Republican conference, in other words, is at about zero. They want nothing to do with another round of relief checks. An extension of the enhanced unemployment benefits included in the CARES Act will happen, in South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s words, “over our dead bodies.” There’s not much interest, either, in the package of tax expenditures that President Donald Trump has proposed, a caricature of Republican interests that includes a capital gains tax cut and a restoration of the business deduction for meals and entertainment.

Republicans are so committed to immiserating people they will put it squarely above even their own political self-interest. But Nancy Pelosi likes ice cream something something.