The Democratic-led House of Representatives has been working day and night to create an economic relief package that would target Americans impacted by the coronavirus. At the same time, the Republican-led Senate, under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been dragging its heels and delaying doing its very essential part in the lawmaking process. When the House passed a coronavirus bill that they got the biggest imbecile on the planet to finally agree to LAST WEEK, McConnell didn’t simply refuse to do his job: he was on vacation. We are deep in uncharted waters, and a few days of inaction could mean thousands of people’s lives. So on Thursday, March 12, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio went to the Senate floor to speak for the American people and bring down righteous anger directed at the Republican Party’s leadership.
Sen. Brown began by stating the very simple negligence going on in our government. “President Trump had chance after chance after chance to get ahead of this coronavirus pandemic in the United States. He failed. Congress can't make the same mistakes, senators should not leave town,” he said. Brown pointed out what was at stake for not only the American worker, but the health of all those unable to stay home—not because they are providing an essential service, but because they cannot afford to stay home.
Brown then slammed a president who spends most of his time judging America based on the stock market while doing nothing meaningful to stabilize the stock market. Containing and treating the spread of COVID-19 would go a long way to achieve even this president’s superficial goals, Brown said.
The best way to stop the spread of the virus is to say to people, if they're sick, you can stay home. And you can get sick pay like every other country in the world. Every other rich country in the world provides sick pay for people who can't go to work because they're sick it's just it's as simple as that.
Brown then walked through Donald Trump’s dismantling of our infectious disease infrastructure, or the agency and people put in place to fight a pandemic like the one we are facing today. The Ohio senator tried to do his best to explain it in terms Trump and his sycophants might understand. Brown brought up the importance of giving relief to the working people and families in need, instead of more handouts to corporations. He pointed out that American corporations, enriched by the Republican scam tax cuts, reinvested nothing into their workforces and instead participated in a record number of stock buybacks—something that does nothing to prepare them for the current crisis.
And Sen. Brown is not simply responding like any decent human being would in a time of crisis: he’s responding to the people he represents and their needs, as well as the needs of Republican senators’ constituents. Tragically, a GOP consisting of people like Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul does not represent Americans in need.
And finally, because HOLY SHIT we are LITERALLY dealing with a pandemic, Sen. Mitch McConnell is at last promising he will do his job.
Donald Trump was asked about people like Sen. Brown, who had asked the white supremacist idiot to explain his plan to replace our infectious diseases teams. Trump called the question “nasty,” and said no one had ever asked him about it. Brown has the 2018 letter, sent by the Ohio senator, pinned to his Twitter account.
Promises from people like McConnell mean about as much as a promise from a witch in a Grimm’s fairytale, but it is … something.