Blog No. 268. Of RBG and the Problem Solvers Caucus

President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement released yesterday that pivoted from gracious praise of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to doublespeak about how 2020 is supposedly qualitatively different from 2016.

[T]he funeral baked meats [d]id coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Hamlet (in Act I, Scene II), chafing at how soon after the death of his father the king, his mother, Queen Gertrude, remarried the new king, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius.

Both quotes are taken from Michael Dorf’s Saturday posting in Dorf on Law. As Dorf explained:

It was inevitable that the news cycle would not pause to reflect on the extraordinary career and life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before turning immediately to a discussion of whether there exist at least four Republican Senators who are not utter hypocrites. Still, I might have thought that savvy-if-evil politicians like Senator McConnell would have waited at least 24 hours before announcing their schemes for how they intend to reshape the post-RBG Court, if not out of common decency then perhaps because appearing to take time to grieve would be good politics. Call me naive.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a diminutive figure but a towering intellect whose monumental contributions to the Supreme Court and to the country will not be erased by future justices or their decisions. On a personal note, although I am just slightly younger, my time at Cornell overlapped that of Ruth Bader and her future husband, Martin Ginsburg. (The Cornell Chronicle provided a video of Justice Ginsburg in a September 18, 2014 interview reminiscing about her days at Cornell and how they shaped her journey to the Supreme Court.) I don’t think I ever met Ruth Bader or Martin Ginsburg but, as a contemporary alumnus, I claim a share of pride in their accomplishments.

Much of the oxygen in the media salon and the larger political world has been sucked up by speculation as to what Justice Ginsburg’s death will mean for the coming election, what effect the election may have on the confirmation of her successor, and what the change in the composition of the Supreme Court may mean in determining the final outcome of the election and in the jurisprudence of the Court for years to come. Those are intriguing and vitally important questions, but ones on which I will, for the most part, reserve comment. At this point, I will simply say that I am among those who hope that at least four Republicans can be found to have the spine for applying the “McConnell Rule,” a rule from which its author is now in full and unseemly flight. (As I am sure readers are aware, McConnell’s rule proscribed the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice in a President’s final term. McConnell’s rationale for the abandonment of his own rule was aptly dismissed by Professor Dorf as “doublespeak.”)

Owing to the focus on Justice Ginsburg’s passing, there are crucial issues that have been swept from the front pages. High on the list is a further COVID-19 stimulus bill which has long been stalled on Capitol Hill. The failure to pass the bill has one thing in common with the coming war over filling Justice Ginsburg’s seat: it illustrates the desperate need for a return to common sense and comity on Capitol Hill. Last week, however, there was a hopeful sign; perhaps it will prove to be little more than a flower springing up amid rubble, but it was still hopeful.

On Tuesday, members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus released a proposed compromise stimulus bill. The proposal included approximately $1.5 trillion in funding (subject to upward or downward adjustment), which put it between the Republicans’ latest $650 billion “skinny stimulus,” and the Democrats’ more generous $2.2 trillion proposal (reduced from the more than $3 trillion previously proposed). The Problem Solvers’ plan is a product of efforts by 25 Democrats and 25 Republicans who have miraculously retained an instinct to legislate and to work across the aisle to do so. Whatever the fate of their proposal, it is heartening that there is such an entity and that it has attracted fifty members.

The full framework of the Problem Solvers’ proposal, “March to Common Ground,” can be found at their website. The key elements are:

• An extension to enhanced unemployment insurance: The legislation includes $120 billion for enhanced unemployment insurance that would guarantee every recipient a $450 weekly supplement for eight weeks. These additional benefits could increase to $600 a week through the end of January if those benefits do not surpass a person’s previous wages. This provision does not offer the full $600 weekly supplement across the board as Democrats have pushed to do, but it is more expansive than the $300 weekly add-on Republicans included in their latest bill.
• A second round of stimulus checks: The Problem Solvers’ proposal contains $280 billion for another wave of $1,200 stimulus checks for adults making $75,000 or less per year in adjusted gross income. It would also cover another $500 in direct support for each child in a household that qualifies, as well as $500 for each adult dependent.
• Funding for state and local governments: There is $500 billion included for state and local government aid aimed at addressing coronavirus revenue shortfalls as well as added costs. Republicans had previously chafed at including state and local aid at all, while Democrats had pushed for upward of $900 billion in the HEROES Act.
• More small business loans: The plan would re-purpose some of the remaining $145 billion that has yet to be distributed in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a loan program aimed at helping small businesses. It would also allocate $95 billion in new funds split between the PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
• Funding for schools: A total of $145 billion is included in the plan, including $15 billion for child care providers, $100 billion for K-12 schools, and $30 billion for higher education institutions as they reopen and implement remote learning set-ups. Republicans’ plan had previously included $105 billion, while a June bill from Democrats contained $430 billion.
• Funding for COVID testing: $100 billion is allocated for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, along with other health care costs such as telehealth expansion expenses for providers.

Individual provisions can be debated as insufficient or excessive. For example, I would question the provision for additional stimulus checks. If the checks are distributed on the same basis as in the original round, they will go to individuals and families who, like the writer, may be far from affluent but who have no genuine need for them (and whose consumer spending will be unaffected). But the larger and more important point is that the proposal should be the basis for resuming negotiations and promptly bringing them to conclusion. Unfortunately the prospects are cloudy at best.

On the encouraging side, the March To Common Ground proposal drew a surprisingly favorable reaction from President Trump. As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Trump praised the Problem Solvers Caucus’s plan while saying areas of disagreement could be resolved in negotiations.

“They’re left. They’re right. But they came up with this idea, and I think they are well on their way to suggesting some pretty good things,” he said. “I agree with a lot of it.”

On the other hand, according to Senate Majority Whip John Thune, many Republicans would not support the proposal, and Senator Chuck Grassley said the he saw little chance of a compromise bill being passed before the November election. Even more disappointing, Democratic leaders were publicly negative. In an unusual joint statement, House Democratic committee leaders dismissed the bipartisan plan. Saying that it “falls short of what is needed to save lives and boost the economy.” At the same time, according to a report in the Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “has been unwilling to budge from the position she’s held for months — that Democrats should hold out for a wide-ranging bill with a price tag of at least $2 trillion, covering a multitude of issues from unemployment insurance to testing to the Post Office.”

Throughout the Trump administration, I have devoted far more time to being critical of Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill than I have to challenging Democratic leaders. In this instance, however, it appears that Democrats are every bit as guilty as Republicans for the irresponsible stalemate, and perhaps more so. A New York Time op-ed by Dr. Jay C. Shambaugh, chief economist at the White House council of economic advisers in the George W. Bush administration, was aptly titled “A $I.5 Trillion Compromise Democrats Can’t Ignore.” Shambaugh laid out the case for the urgent need for stimulus—and compromise:

It may be easier, politically, to give up and devolve into partisan blaming as Election Day nears. However, it is imperative that a new deal is reached to avoid suffering and to keep the economy from further slowing.

Politically, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is receiving increasing pushback from House Members who may be vulnerable in the November election. In a contentious phone call on Tuesday, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), responded to a comment from a fellow lawmaker who said members should be following their convictions by saying: “My conviction is to actually do my goddamn job and come up with a solution for the American people. We have to bring something to the floor.”

Spanberger was right. Republicans and Democrats alike must not allow stimulus relief to be come a victim of pre-election maneuvering. Nor should it be lost in the furor over filling Justice Ginsburg’s seat, as that would be a terribly sad coda to her legacy.