Mitch McConnell Is Holding The HEROES Act Hostage
Tuesday July 21st, and I’m startled by the sunlit eeriness of walking across the Senate lawn at noon. There’s a podium awaiting Senators, and close by the familiar faces of dedicated activists, Melissa Byrne and Reggie Hubard: two incredibly competent organizers who’ve spent years in DC advocating for progressive causes. I vaguely wonder how many hours I’ve spent on Capitol Hill; as a child, as an employee, as a protestor, as a journalist. And in all those hours, I’ve never seen it as quiet as it is now. Gone are the 5th graders on a field trip snaking through the grounds in matching t shirts; the well dressed staffers rushing past like colorful schools of fish; the tall important looking 40 somethings walking by so swiftly it’s hard to tell if they’re a lobbyist, a member, or just some random person with an agenda.
At this point in the coronavirus debacle, America’s underperformance in relief efforts almost go without saying. I wonder if the Senators preparing to speak look more downcast than usual, or if I’m just projecting. It is, after all, almost 100 degrees out. The HEROES act, passed in the house over a month ago, remains untouched by the Senate- a garish level of congressional incompetence which will have dire consequences for the millions of recently unemployed. The civil hostage that Mitch McConnell has performed on modern America will go down in history as one of the more brazen acts by a majority leader. Members of his own party are pushing him to pass something, with more vulnerable Republican senators pointing out that survival, at this point, has to come before arbitrary concerns with “cost”. The legislating body which has found so many ear marks and tax breaks for America’s increasingly growing millionaire class somehow quails when millions are becoming infected with a deadly virus, while simultaneously plunging into financial ruin.
The House passed the HEROES act in May, and Democrats (correctly) have been hammering home the need for a Republican majority Senate to act swiftly, as Covid cases rise past the four million mark and America’s workers are plunged into 1930s era straits. As of Sunday July 26, the Covid era unemployment benefits guaranteed by the CARES act will expire, as will the eviction holds which have protected millions of Americans who have lost significant (if not all) of their income. If the Senate doesn’t act, and swiftly, America is not only looking at a country in the middle of an economic crisis, but a nation of people who are facing eviction, housing insecurity, and homelessness in the middle of an aggressively contagious virus.
Senators Merkely, Van Hollen, and others step to the mic; some with boxing gloves that say “keep fighting”. Three young DACA activists from Maryland ask what this will mean for immigrants; a woman to my right asks why independent contractors (not technically employees) have been excluded both from unemployment benefits and small business loan benefits. A frazzled Van Hollen agrees with her that this is, indeed, a problem. I can feel in my gut the truth that ties these two questions together: in a nation already violently fractured by some of the most dramatic income inequality in generations, a pandemic has left those who were already living on the edge falling all the way over.
A version of the HEROES act is likely to pass. The version that will be passed will inevitably not go far enough. Americans are losing income, safety, and sanity as a disease whose spread could have been quelled with basic governance in February instead shows no sign of stopping it’s rapid move though all 50 states as 150,000 are dead and four million are diagnosed. The rest of the world has shut its doors to us, as across the rest of the world cases of Covid are either going down or disappearing altogether.
A woman next to me points toward Dirkson, the senate office building: “is it open?”
“Only to staff right now.”
She laughs. “That’s a shame. I’m ready to go in and fuck some shit up.”
Aggressive.
And yet, I don’t think she’s alone in that feeling. I really don’t.
