McConnell Plans To Let States Sink Instead Of Rendering Aid

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If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was a woman, his latest remarks would have been blamed on menstruation or menopause. He is opposed to providing New York and other “blue states” with federal funding for budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic. Instead, the Kentucky senator urged them to use “the bankruptcy route.” Keep in mind, New York was hit with over a quarter of a million COVID-19 cases.

The number of New Yorkers who died is 15,302 out of 55,723 hospitalized and counting. Conversely, Kentucky has had 3,192 cases of COVID-19, 171 deaths, and 1,174 hospitalizations. If McConnell wanted money for his police, his EMT workers, and medical personnel, he could just ask his billionaire shipping magnate father-in-law for a small loan, a very small loan. After all, he gave the couple $59 million.

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McConnell could ask his wife Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to divert more funding into their state. The senator could also ask the Russian aluminum magnate and President Vladimir Putin’s close associate to build another aluminum processing plant in his state’s backyard.

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McConnell told radio host Hugh Hewitt additional funding for states and local governments had to be “thoroughly evaluated,” according to The Independent Co.:

‘I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities. And there’s no good reason for it not to be available. My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.’

Representative King (R- NY) called McConnell the “Marie Antoinette” of the coronavirus pandemic and said the senator’s remark was  “absolutely disgraceful:”

‘Maybe he doesn’t realize the Civil War is over…We have bodies literally piling up. It’s a political cheap shoT…this is not an ideological issue…people are dying. It was never a political issue until 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.’

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The earlier $2.2 trillion coronavirus bill provided state and local governments with $150 billion. The states will have huge hits to their budgets, because the coronavirus economic impact has been so great.

Hewitt suggested California, Connecticut, and Illinois would be attractive alternatives for bankruptcies, due to their overly generous benefits for their public employees. McConnell replied:

‘You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done it to themselves with their pension programs. There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations. We’ll certainly insist that anything we’d borrow to send down to the states is not spent on solving problems that they created for themselves over the years with their pension program.’

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Tuesday the National Governors Associations gave McConnell and other lawmakers a letter requesting state aid in the form of a half-trillion-dollar coronavirus relief package. They wrote it was necessary to provide “direct federal aid that allows for replacement of lost revenue.”

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Governor Larry Hogan (R-MA) chairs the governors’ association and vice-chair Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) wrote:

‘These continuing losses will force states and territories not only to make drastic cuts to the programs we depend on to provide economic security, educational opportunities, and public safety, but the national economic recovery will be dramatically hampered.’

Actually, it would be illegal for the states to go bankrupt, which McConnell knows well.

Featured image screenshot via Twitter.

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