Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would let cash-strapped states and local governments impacted by the coronavirus go “the bankruptcy route” instead of working across the aisle to provide desperately needed federal relief. His comments came a day before the Labor Department reported more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment — erasing the gains the U.S. economy made since the Great Recession.
Not a single Republican Senator has spoken out against McConnell’s position that states and cities should go bankrupt instead of receiving support from the federal government.
States, including Kentucky, are “scrambling to head off unprecedented fiscal calamity” with the need for emergency relief “growing more dire by the day.” Governors and mayors of both parties from across the country have called on Congress to send aid to prevent them from having to shut down essential services and lay off thousands of public employees, including local law enforcement and first responders.
Republicans in the Senate tried to block a Democratic proposal to provide $150 billion more for state and local government and tribal relief in the most recent coronavirus package, and have put corporate special interests ahead of the needs of working Americans, hospitals and health care workers, and states on the frontlines of this crisis.
“Governors, mayors and local leaders are working to address this crisis and more than 26 million Americans are unemployed but Mitch McConnell and his spineless Republican Majority would rather let the states they represent fall into bankruptcy than provide them with the urgent federal support they need to avoid mass layoffs and looming shutdowns of essential services,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “Republicans need to explain to their constituents why they’d rather see their own states and towns collapse than work across party lines to send federal aid.”
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