Beyond that, the final hurdles to reaching an agreement were a reminder of something we should have learned during the Obama years: When a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans try to sabotage the economy. And the sabotage doesn’t stop with using phony deficit concerns to block necessary spending; it also involves deliberately increasing the risk of financial crisis.
Remember, G.O.P. flimflam when Barack Obama was president went beyond posing as deficit hawks to block needed fiscal stimulus. It also involved constant criticism and harassment of the Fed over its efforts to rescue the economy. And now it’s happening again.
Some background: Although the pandemic recession was deep and ugly, it could easily have been even uglier. For a few weeks in March, America teetered on the edge of a financial crisis approaching the meltdown following the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Fortunately, however, this incipient crisis was quickly contained by the Federal Reserve, which stabilized markets both by purchasing trillions of dollars’ worth of financial assets and by making it clear that it would do even more if necessary.
That was a job well done. But the risk of financial crisis hasn’t gone away, so we want to make sure that the Fed has the tools to meet future challenges.
Yet last month Steven Mnuchin, the blessedly departing Treasury secretary, gratuitously clawed back hundreds of billions of dollars in budget backing for Fed emergency lending programs, making those funds unavailable to his successor. And talks over economic relief almost fell apart over a last-minute demand by Senator Pat Toomey, backed by the Republican leadership, that the legislation bar the Fed from restarting some of these programs or anything like them.
In the end, this poison pill appears to have been rendered mostly harmless, with face-saving language that prevents exact copycat programs but seems to leave room for slightly different programs that would achieve the same results.
But the episode was a preview of things to come. If another crisis develops, expect Republicans to do all they can to prevent an effective response.
So how should we feel about this relief deal? The glass is half full: For millions of American families, the next few months will be less hellish than they would have been otherwise. The glass is half empty: Unless Democrats win those Georgia seats, expect an ugly spring and years of economic sabotage ahead.
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