[Republicans have been laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden
administration on federal spending by focusing on the price tag for
virus relief. It makes it all the more critical that Democrats retake
the Senate and eliminate the filibuster.] [[link removed]]

MCCONNELL HAS WRITTEN OFF TRUMP, IT'S NOW ALL ABOUT PREEMPTIVELY
CRIPPLING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION  
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Joan McCarter
October 14, 2020
Daily Kos
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_ Republicans have been laying the groundwork to restrain a Biden
administration on federal spending by focusing on the price tag for
virus relief. It makes it all the more critical that Democrats retake
the Senate and eliminate the filibuster. _

, Getty Images

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been taking a lot of fire
[[link removed]] for
not just capitulating to Republicans and taking the poison-pilled
scraps that they are purportedly offering in pandemic relief. Those
poison pills are the big tell here. Mitch McConnell doesn't want a
deal and his refusal to pass anything without them are all the proof
you need.

We've speculated
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this for a few weeks
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the possibility that McConnell and his fellow Republicans have already
given up on a Trump victory, and is purposefully wrecking the economy
to complicate Joe Biden's first year in office. Both in giving him a
wrecked economy, and setting the stage for making it harder to demand
the trillions that are going to be necessary to save the country. That
speculation has proven true, with Republican operatives
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that's the strategy.

As the _Washington Post'_s Greg Sargent points out, McConnell has
offered up the bare minimum of assistance to give vulnerable
Republicans something to point to, to tell voters that they've done a
thing and maybe, maybe save his majority. But he's got his poison pill
that he knows Democrats will not accept: absolving businesses from any
liability for exposing their workers to infection with COVID-19. It's
seemed for months that McConnell didn't want a deal and now, well,
a Republican operative
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it, and says point blank it's about fighting Biden next year.

A GOP strategist who has been consulting on Senate campaigns told
Bloomberg that "Republicans have been carefully laying the groundwork
to restrain a Biden administration on federal spending and the budget
deficit by talking up concerns about the price tag for another round
of virus relief." A number of hard-core Republicans have been using
the deficit peacock's argument against saving the nation for months,
to be clear. This isn't new—it's what Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ron
Johnson have been arguing since early summer. But now it's hardened
into how they'll deal with a Biden administration starting in January.
"The thinking, the strategist said, is that it would be very hard
politically to agree on spending trillions more now and then in
January suddenly embrace fiscal restraint."

It makes it all the more critical that Democrats retake the Senate. It
also makes it all the more critical that when they do, they eliminate
the filibuster so they can pass the trillions of dollars in stimulus
that is going to be necessary without allowing Republicans to stop it.

_Joan McCarter is Senior Political Writer for Daily Kos_

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