Republicans Holding Help Hostage

More Americans are like my brother, Michael, than like me. Like most Americans my brother doesn’t really keep tabs on politics or government in general. Michael had been out of work for nearly 6 months due to being laid off by his employer when business got so slow due to the pandemic. During that time he became quite frustrated that congress failed to pass a second stimulus and many expanded unemployment benefits had expired. My brother, like many Americans, blamed both parties for unwillingness to compromise.

I explained to him that the Democratic controlled House had passed two more stimulus bills since the initial CARES Act while the Republican controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn hadn’t even bothered to hold hearings on either bill let alone vote on them. I told showed him that members of the House leadership were continuing to negotiate with the Senate leadership but that the sticking points are serious and meeting Republican demands was dangerous for the public. It’s important to understand that what McConnell and Cornyn are demanding could result in the deaths of thousands more Americans because immunity from liability for injury caused by failure to adequately protect workers and customers from exposure to COVID-19 would encourage more employers to put workers health at risk. That’s not just a possibility, it already happened in many work places including meat packing plants in the mid-West that ended up closing back in April and May when so many of their employees became ill.

Republicans argue that business will suffer without immunity as too many spurious lawsuits will be filed. So far there have been fewer than 250 businesses sued across the nation over COVID-19 issues, which is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the 10,000 lawsuits brought over the usual issues that occur every year. There is a simpler way to address such concerns and but the Trump administration has failed to take action. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has the responsibility and power to write rules for workplace safety, they simply haven’t done so. Instead OSHA has written recommendations with weasel wording like “if feasible” and “when possible” rather than setting a rule stating the employers “will” follow the directive. If OSHA simply wrote and promulgated such workplace safety rules the only businesses at serious risk of being sued would be those that didn’t comply with the rules.

The other ridiculous demand that Republicans are making is to drop financial assistance to states and cities all of which have found budgets suddenly cut due to massive reductions in sales tax revenue because the pandemic has so many people staying at home and out of work so they can’t spend. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that we don’t need police, firefighters, and other city and state workers. Since cities and states cannot legally run deficits many have already laid off critical workers because there simply isn’t enough money to pay them. This not only hurts everyone in that community by the loss of the service, it also just adds another person to the roles of unemployed and therefore need assistance paying their bills.

During the election, Republicans made spurious claims about Democrats wanting to defund the police, in reality Republicans are the ones who are actually doing it. As in most cases this is not a both sides are to blame situation, Republicans are the ones who are withholding support for hungry children in an effort to give away worker protections. If you want something done call Senator John Cornyn and give him a piece of your mind.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 16, 2020