‘He doesn’t care.’ Mitch gloats over Supreme Court while his constituents suffer.
Today, Oct. 26, is Sen. Mitch McConnell’s day of triumph, the day he gets to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court and ensure conservative domination for several lifetimes, and Latrice Wilson would like a word.
“Why is COVID aid not a priority for him? Wilson asked. “Why should his constituents have to feel like we’re begging? People are trying to survive and it’s hard to survive and he doesn’t care.”
McConnell has not just failed to act to more COVID-19 relief that could help his struggling constituents, he has worked actively against it, while blaming Democrats. But it’s clear that a long debate over aid might have distracted him from confirming Barrett, thus fulfilling his dearest, court-packing dreams, cementing his status as the wiliest tactician in history. Why should poor people in Kentucky get in the way of that?
Wilson, who lives in Louisville, lost her full-time and part-time jobs back in April. The only reason she kept her rent paid was from the first round of COVID-19 aid, the CARES Act. She got her job back, but all around her in Louisville, she sees people getting evicted because they can’t find work.
Further east, God’s Pantry Food Bank, which coordinates for food banks all over Central and Eastern Kentucky, has seen the highest food distribution in its 65-year-old history for four of the past six months. The state fund to help renters and prevent eviction is drying up, which means more homeless people just as COVID-19 rates are surging again. State government is preparing for 8 percent budget cuts.
“I just don’t think he (McConnell) cares because it doesn’t affect him,” said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. “It doesn’t change his political calculations. The stock market has recovered so that group of people is doing great. Job losses are concentrated at the very bottom, the pain is concentrated among the poorest people and he has never been responsive to that.”
According to national reports, McConnell has stymied the bill that Democrats (and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin) was working on because of the Supreme Court, and because it would hurt deficit-anxious Republican candidates. (Remember, deficits don’t matter when you are handing out tax cuts to the wealthy, only when poor people need help.) The third speculation is that he knows Trump is losing and doesn’t want to hand out any largesse that might help Biden as he comes into office.
It’s looking unlikely that Mitch will lose, but less clear whether he’ll continue to be Senate Majority Leader. But even if Democrats win the Senate and the presidency, a long, cold winter will be underway before they can do anything about more relief.
“The senate’s failure to provide additional coronavirus aid is one of the most heinous non acts in recent legislative history,” said Ben Carter, a lawyer and housing expert at the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. “It was so obvious this was an 18-month proposition at least. We’re in a really scary moment.”
Evictions in Kentucky have started to climb after a lull when the courts were closed and various bans were in place. Most recently, in the face of another surge in COVID-19 cases, the CDC issued an eviction ban for anyone who can’t afford to pay rent. The problem, Carter said, is that you have to know about it, and then get the form to send to your landlord, who may or may not contest it.
As Carter said, people who rent their homes are also the most likely to be laid off, the most likely to have to report to their workplaces so they can make ends meet, and the most vulnerable to COVID-19. The KentuckyEqual Justice Center created a free app called the Homerenters Declaration allows people to review, sign, and send the Declaration to their landlords in just a few minutes from their smartphone or computer.
But why would Mitch McConnell care about people getting evicted? As Howard Fineman recently described him, Mitch is the “apex predator” of American politics. “McConnell is transforming the federal judiciary from sometimes-defenders of the poor, immigrants and people of color into the Praetorian Guard of corporations, the wealthy, and those whose cultural and racial privileges make them, at best, oblivious to their collective responsibility to all Americans.”
Mitch’s mission is complete. His constituents’ pain — their homelessness, hunger, sickness — is little more than an abstraction. He’s answered the first question: He could help them but he won’t. The only other question is why we continue to re-elect him.
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 1:45 PM.
