The GOP's 'deprivation' fetish is making it impossible to make policy, even in a total disaster

• Even during a once-a-century disaster Republicans can't help but fetishize the determination of who in America does and does not deserve help from the federal government. They like parsing out who is worthy and who is not.
• This moralization of fiscal policy is a large part of why discussions for this second coronavirus aid package have been left to the last minute for the US economy.
• While Democrats started talking about another round of aid this summer, Senate Republicans didn't start taking negotiations seriously until November.
• Now that discussions are happening in earnest, the GOP's major sticking points aren't about what makes economic sense, they're moralizations about who in America is and is not worthy of aid.
• To the GOP some people don't deserve help even though they're in need: Unemployed people, people who live in blue states, people who are vulnerable at work.
• We know that being stingy with aid now means a slower recovery once the pandemic is over, but Republicans don't care about that — they just want to make a point about values and punish people who disagree with them.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

It's taken forever to get a second round of coronavirus aid to Americans, and now that Congress is inching closer to what seems like maybe-could-possibly-be-here's-hoping-will-be a deal, the sticking points are coming down to the GOP's deprivation fetish. Republicans still want to parse out which Americans are and are not worthy for aid based on who they think is deserving, not who is in need.

If you want evidence of this, just look at which parts of aid negotiations were most contentious - aid to state and local governments and a COVID-19 liability shield for businesses. Republicans have no interest in helping states that elect opposition governments, and they have no interest in giving workers recourse to hold their employers accountable if they are harmed at work. Never mind that 8 million Americans have sunk into poverty since this summer, or that our unemployment crisis is ramping up as the virus takes hold once again.

The rest of the aid is in flux, but as of Wednesday afternoon a bipartisan group of Senators has managed to hammer out a deal that, for now, would include a $300 unemployment aid supplement, a short-term extension of other unemployment programs, aid for businesses, schools, and a round of $600 to $700 stimulus checks.

Those checks, though, might come with a shortening of the unemployment programs because Republicans want to keep the bill under $1 trillion (yes, that number is arbitrary). So instead of extending these critical programs for out of work Americans by four months, the extension is being cut back to three months so that other Americans can get some aid too. Could we do both? Yes. Would it be better for the economy and mean a faster recovery if we did? Economists say yes. Will the GOP allow it? Seems not. To them writing fiscal aid is not about fulfilling a need, it's about making a point.

That is why, right now, Republicans are still being miserly about who gets unemployment benefits and for how long. Can't reward laziness, even in an economy that is 10 million jobs in the hole.

Discussions about aid sent directly to state and local governments has been pushed to a separate bill entirely because the GOP wants to punish states that have different budget priorities - states run by people who don't agree with them. For many Republicans, helping blue states would be akin to affirming the lifestyle choices of those states, their values, their morality. Can't do that either.

As GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida put it in a column for the National Review:

What Democrats really want is for Congress to just send money to liberal politicians who have already shown they can't be trusted with it. If these politicians have budget shortfalls, it's because they did not prioritize their struggling constituents in the first place, and instead wasted money on other things. New York and California are of course free to burn tax dollars for fun. But they shouldn't expect Florida and the rest of the country to pay when the bill comes due.

This is utter nonsense. California projected a $6 billion budget surplus in 2020 before the pandemic hit. And liberals are tired of reiterating that states like New York put more in the federal pot than many GOP-dominated states.

The thing is, I hate even mentioning that in a disaster because it's irrelevant. Every American in need should get help and not have to worry if their state is going to cut the services they rely on. This pandemic is not their fault. If there was ever a time to put moralizing aside and use good old common sense, it's now, but some Republicans can't do that.

You can't make sense out of nonsense

Like I said, this the GOP is using this bill to exercise a judgement kink. Scott doesn't want to help states that don't share his values because values, he thinks, are what make Americans worthy of help. It doesn't matter that sticking it to blue states by withholding aid would stick it to red states too. This both stupid and cruel.

As his GOP colleague Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio pointed out in support of direct state and local aid: "The economy is not getting better in most of our states."

We should have already learned this lesson about fiscal moralizing in the pandemic months ago, with unemployment benefits. After the first aid bill passed back in April there was a ton of bellyaching from the business community about how extended benefits would deplete their workforce because people wouldn't want to go back on the job if they were making enough money to live comfortably. Can't reward laziness, remember.

But a slew of studies show that the COVID unemployment policies have done nothing to discourage people from looking for work.

Even business lobbyists are coming around to see that you can't push people to go back to jobs that don't exist by forcing them to suffer hardship, according to the Washington Post.

"You don't want people to think they have to rush back to work because unemployment insurance is not able to provide enough income," Glenn Spencer, the executive vice president of employment policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, told WaPo's Tory Newmyer. "Some of the jobs that people would be able to get back to in a normal recession aren't going to be there. So it's going to take workers longer to adjust to the economy that we've got."

You don't say, Glenn. It would be better for millions of Americans if Republicans and the business community had come to this conclusion by reading my column back in April - or by setting the deprivation fetish aside and using common sense. That is to say, it didn't take a genius to see that jobs would scarce for throughout the pandemic.

But shout out to the nameless lobbyist who admitted that the "rhetoric" around the danger of extended unemployment benefits from the business community was "a bit much." Thanks, really.

People like this lobbyist have come around to support more supplemental unemployment aid for another way-too-obvious-reason as well - because they have had the revelation that if Americans are broke they can't spend money on the things businesses are selling. This point still seems lost on the GOP lawmakers though, and so fights over unemployment aid persist. Right now they're trying to make sure people who get direct $600 checks don't also get a $300 unemployment supplement. Experts are calling this complication "unworkable" just to be polite. It's buffoonish and barbaric.

The sticking point of state and local governments doesn't make sense either. First of all, starving state and local government budgets results in unemployment, which these fiscal moralists purport to hate. And as my colleague Josh Barro pointed out in a recent column, giving aid to state and local governments to ride out this period of the pandemic makes more sense than forcing them to raise taxes while people are broke or cut services at a time when people need them. That would make a recovery slower and risk more longterm damage to the economy.

These are the facts but Republicans don't like fiscal facts, they like fiscal feelings. Even during a once-a-century disaster they can't help but fetishize the act of choosing which Americans deserve to be taken care of, and which do not. You can try to reason with them, but what's the point?