Lindsey
Graham had a lock on most ludicrous senator — until Josh Hawley pounced
Opinion by
Columnist
Jan. 13, 2021 at 8:51 a.m. CST
Joe Biden and the
Democratic-controlled 117th Congress will benefit from what freshman Sen. Josh
Hawley (R-Mo.) did at the end of the 116th. It and Hawley will soon recede into
the mists of memory, but this should be remembered: Before Hawley immolated his
brief political career (see the photo of
his clenched-fist salute of solidarity as he walked past the mob that was about
to sack the Capitol), he seemed certain to be a presidential candidate in 2024.
Which probably explains his performance during the December auction in the
Senate.
In late December,
President Trump, who was thinking that Hawley and kindred congressional spirits
could deliver to him a second term, decided that
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) were right to demand that pandemic relief-cum-stimulus
legislation should feature $2,000 checks showered evenhandedly on those in need
and on scores of millions who are not. Three senatorial mini-Trumps — Lindsey
O. Graham (R-S.C.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Hawley — promptly joined the
Pelosi-Schumer-Trump Axis of Generosity.
Rubio had favored
$600 checks when he tweeted the
requisite (for Republicans) six words, and then pirouetted to the predictable
seventh: “I am concerned about the debt, but . . .” Regarding Rubio as a potential rival
for the 2024 presidential nomination, Hawley increased the bidding to $2,000,
joined, of course, by Graham, who, after golfing with Trump, proclaimed $2,000
“reasonable” and said: “Let’s go big
for the American people.” Hawley tweeted an
argument for $2,000 that made up in concision what it lacked in precision:
“There’s obviously plenty of $$ to do it.”
Brevity is the soul
of Twitter, as well as of (thank you, Dorothy Parker)
lingerie, so Hawley could not dwell on details. Perhaps he meant that
there always is “plenty” of money — even though the national
debt increased $4.2 trillion in
fiscal 2020 — because any sum can be borrowed or printed. Hawley avoided specifics,
but populists often advocate diverting foreign aid to finance domestic
largesse. Polls show that Americans
consistently believe that foreign aid is about 25 percent of the federal
budget. In fiscal 2020 it was $40 billion, less
than 1 percent of the budget. Hawley’s $2,000 checks would have
added $464 billion to
the deficit.
The
Pelosi-Schumer-Trump-Hawley-Rubio-Graham collaboration was a taste of the
bipartisanship for which Americans say they hunger. Indeed, 44 Republican members of the
House — 22 percent of the
Republican caucus — voted with Pelosi’s members for $2,000. The Senate auction,
however, was truncated before the collaborators could ask, “Why not $3,000?”
Adult supervision, in the form of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
intervened.
He noted that
The Washington Post, the New York Times, Larry Summers (treasury secretary
under President Bill Clinton and head of President Barack Obama’s National
Economic Council) and many other liberal voices have opposed non-targeted
checks not linked to need. The measure that McConnell blocked was slightly
progressive in that the flow of money from the federal spigot would have slowed
until it stopped by fully excluding families of five earning above $350,000.
Such a family is in the top 2 percent of
household incomes. So, presumably, the desperate bottom 98 percent of
households need what Democrats were calling “survival checks.”
The geyser of
“stimulus” checks approved in March did not stimulate because the money was
mostly saved or used to pay down debt. The Manhattan Institute’s Brian
Riedl reports that
the overall personal-savings rate soared from 8 percent to 32 percent: People
are avoiding air travel and restaurants not because they are impecunious but
because they are prudent. And the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip notes that
“aggregate wages and salaries were just 0.4% lower in November than before the
pandemic. Thanks to past stimulus, total income was actually 2% higher.”
If Hawley, Rubio and
Graham squint, they can see a silver lining on the dark cloud of Democratic
control of the Senate: Majority Leader Schumer will soon give them an
opportunity to vote for $2,000 disbursements. The national debt has increased almost 40 percent in the past
four years. But when congressional Republicans rediscover (the rhetoric of)
frugality, as surely they will at noon Jan. 20, Biden can cite Hawley’s
assurance that there “obviously” is “plenty” of money.
Until late December,
the shapeshifting Graham — John McCain is my hero; no, Donald Trump, McCain’s
despiser, is; stay tuned for Act 3 — had a lock on the title of most ludicrous
senator. Then Hawley, auction bidder and mob inciter, pounced. Graham’s lock
has been picked. Sic transit gloria mundi.
