Can The Old Ways Work?

 Years ago, talk of a "bipartisan group of legislators" coming up with a solution that was stuck in Congress was a hopeful sign. Today, it just seems like an exhausted nod towards a system that no longer works. From a basic macroeconomic standpoint, any additional stimulus is better than no additional stimulus, but from a political standpoint, there are a variety of changing incentives. 

Some Republicans see the need to pump some more money into the system, but they are attaching that money to limiting liabilities to companies that force people back to work during the pandemic. Some Democrats see an urgent need to get money into the hands of citizens and local governments and are willing to embrace a less than ideal package in order to get it. Biden's incentives are trickier. The 2009 stimulus was too small to erase the smoking crater in the heart of our economy and Obama and Democrats suffered in 2010 as a result. However, no stimulus is terrible and ideally a vaccine will unshackle the economy by the summer. Trump is golfing and has no incentive to do anything to help the American people who very unfairly and meanly voted him out of office.

Ideally, a compromise measure worked out in the Sausage Factory would help ease the burdens on millions of families and hundreds of governments. If Democrats don't win the runoffs in Georgia, this might be the only chance to stimulate the economy via Congressional spending. However, judging from the unmitigated shitstorm that Biden's nominees for key positions has unleashed online among the Very Serious Socialists, any compromise will be seen as a sellout as opposed to a natural byproduct of a nearly equally divided country.

Republicans introduced "no compromise" legislating under Gingrich and brought it to the Senate under McConnell, and I fear that some on the Left will suggest that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The problem is that incentives work differently for Republicans - who don't want the government to do anything for the common people - and Democrats - who do.