Someone needs to start saying no ...

Somebody needs to stop this insanity.  It’s long past time to start saying “no.”

It’s time for Trump and Republicans to hold their ground. 

In short, don’t do any more bargains with the devil. Don’t do foolish, short-sighted tradeoffs in the false hope Democrats won’t screw you in the end, or the media will like you.  Neither is ever going to happen no matter what you do; to do otherwise is not in their nature.   

And for God’s sake, don’t give away any more of our money.  Zero.  You’ve already agreed to pop more than $3 trillion out to buy a bunch of broken promises and fuel almost unimaginable fraud.

Yet Democrats want more. They want to bail out the mismanaged state and local governments they run which were billions in debt, mostly from extravagant public employee pension promises, before this coronavirus outbreak. Democrat leaders say if we don’t provide billions to these states now, they may have to cut some of their (grossly bloated) public employee payrolls.

Of course, they say this would mean laying off first responders, healthcare workers, and teachers, because these are most likely to get sympathy. Note they never include administrative drones and politically appointed hacks who probably make up the majority of public employees. Nope, it’s always about the first responders, healthcare workers and teachers.    

What they also won’t tell you is that in Illinois alone more than 19,000 former public employees get over $100,000 a year in pensions.  Some are well over $300,000 a year; a lot of those seem to be former school district administrators.  One study put the annual drain at about $14 billion. 

And that’s just Illinois. But here’s another kicker – over 71,000 of the retired Illinois government employees drawing fat pensions now live in Florida, probably to escape Illinois’ exceptionally high taxes.  Which are high because – you guessed it – overpaid and bloated public employee payrolls, and overly generous pensions and benefits when these public employees retire. 

Given states like Illinois’ and other deeply in debt states’ history, there’s no reason to believe that if we bailed them out now they’d suddenly become fiscally responsible.     

Democrats aren’t the only ones hoping to feast more on our dollars.  It’s an outright feeding frenzy since Senate Majority Leader McConnell signaled the gravy train might halt for as bit pretty soon. That’s spurred a rush to get everything on the table ASAP.  

Lobbyists want to change the rules for the stupid Payroll Protection Program to allow much larger businesses to get money. Others want to let recipients of the loans use the money for overhead instead of mostly for payroll. Businesses in high-rent districts – like a hair salon in NYC featured in a recent WSJ story, paying rent of $30,000 a month – want to use the money to pay rents, and some also want up to two years to qualify for loan forgiveness. 

Until the Feds finally pushed back, the LA Lakers and huge publicly-traded companies like Ruth Chris and Steak n’ Shake were also pillaging the PPP.  Now Saks, teetering on bankruptcy anyway, is trying to get bucks from PPP and is holding off on selling assets simply to qualify.

Then there’s the constant bitching and whining from people and businesses who should be thankful they are getting any money for free. It’s taking too long. It’s not enough. The application was too hard. There are too many rules. The dog ate my tax records. Blah blah blah …

Haven’t we all seen enough? It needs to end now.     

The first step is to order Mnuchin to stop negotiating. Period. Stop negotiating with anyone in Congress.  Stop negotiating with governors. Stop listening to everybody with their hand out.     

Especially don’t negotiate with Nancy and Chuck anymore. They have absolutely nothing to offer. All they want is to take, take, take, and embarrass Trump and Republicans whenever possible. The very act of negotiating with them simply encourages them.   

They will just keep pushing for ever more outrageous things in return.  A guaranteed monthly payment of $2,000 to every working or non-working resident (not citizen, but resident). Forgiveness of all college loans. Amnesty and full benefits – including the stimulus checks and unemployment bonus – for all illegals.  Up to a trillion bucks in new grants to bail out state and local governments. Billions more to bail out hospitals that couldn't do highly profitable elective procedures while the virus outbreak raged.   

Right now Nancy and Chuck believe they have the upper hand and they are taking full advantage of their perceived greater power.  It’s hard to disagree with them on this since no matter what happens the media will always give Nancy and Chuck the win.    

Even in those rare instances they lose a legislative battle, the media still give them full credit for whatever legislation got passed.  It’s astounding to see Nancy and Chuck stand in front of the mics claiming they won a great victory when they had little or nothing to do with the final legislation except hold it up and delay its ultimate passage for essentially nothing in return. 

According to Nancy and Chuck, whatever that legislation was before, it was terrible; that is, until they made it so much better. Just ask them.    

Negotiating with them is begging for a sucker punch.  That’s the only guarantee.   

At the same time Trump and Republicans should not negotiate with any lobbyists, either.  They should ignore threats from big-business and U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists that without blanket immunity, businesses won’t reopen for fear of frivolous virus-related lawsuits.

That’s utter nonsense. Let me be more direct: it’s complete bullshit. 

I can tell you from experience that every business is always under threat of frivolous lawsuits, from some slip-and-fall shyster, a disgruntled employee, or someone else trying to squeeze a big settlement on questionable grounds. That’s why businesses buy insurance for stuff like this.

So take blanket immunity off the table. It’s an unworkable idea and a non-starter. It’s a red herring that reinforces the Democrat and media narrative that Republicans worry more about protecting rich corporations and business owners than protecting workers.   

You also don’t need to listen to the lobbyists from the theme parks, the airlines, the cruise industry, universities, the PGA (yep, they want a bailout, too), NASCAR, the restaurant industry, the hotel industry, ski resorts, and anybody else that essentially wants free money.  

Just about everybody has taken a hit from the virus-inspired lockdown.  But it’s not the job of Congress or the President to make every person, every business, whole, as if this never happened. That's an unrealistic expectation.  

Nor is it time for either political party to jump on this crisis to get policies and programs they’ve always wanted. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats.  Both sides are increasingly guilty of stuffing extraneous crap into legislation, such as the funding for PBS and the Kennedy Center, or de facto tort reform, in trade for something else.  

The country is on fire. People are dying. And yet politicians are still negotiating on a wide range of other stuff that one side or the other thinks will appease their base.  

That’s why nothing is getting done.  Just a lot of posturing. 

To break the impasse, Republicans and Trump need to take everything off the table, especially giving away more money “to help in the recovery.” The rationale for this is obvious: let’s see if what we’ve done already makes any difference, first. 

Most importantly, don’t give Nancy and Chuck the impression there’s anything you want so badly you’ll do a deal with them to get it. In essence, when they offer a trade for something they think you desperately want, tell them you already have everything you need right now, thank you.  

But let them know if they feel strongly enough about what they want, they should bring it to the floor of the full House and Senate by itself, not hidden in another piece of legislation, for a roll-call vote putting every Representative and Senator on record.

See how they react to that.  And while we’re at it, apply the same rule to all the special interest requests made by Republicans, too. 

I bet that would leave a mark, for the better.