Republicans are going to try to drown the economy

Brace yourselves!

An elephant stepping on the Wall Street bull.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

After a campaign season lasting what seems like approximately 20,000 years, the actual election is coming up in less than two months. It has been clear for weeks that the economy is slowly stalling out well short of full employment, and tens of millions of people are falling into destitution because they either were not eligible for the first rounds of pandemic relief, or fell through the cracks in the bureaucracy, or have burned through their savings now that the programs are over.

The best thing the Republican Party could do for its president's re-election campaign now would be to take Democrats up on their offer for trillions in additional rescue dollars. Yet Republicans are largely resisting — the latest offer from Senate Republicans is only half the size of the one from weeks ago, and it is not at all clear many of them would actually vote for it. If Joe Biden wins the election, which appears likely, prepare for a tsunami of crocodile tears about spending and the national debt from the GOP. They will attempt to make his presidency a failure by throttling the economy.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.