The Filibuster is Unconstitutional

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the filibuster these days. But here’s one thing about this old Senate rule you might not know: the filibuster actually violates the Constitution.

41 Senate Republicans, who represent only 21 percent of the American population, are blocking the “For the People Act,” which is supported by 67 percent of Americans. They’re also blocking an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, supported by 62 percent of Americans. And so much else.  

Even some so-called moderate Democrats, like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, have outsized power to block crucial legislation thanks to the filibuster.

Many of those who defend the filibuster consider themselves “originalists,” who claim to be following the Constitution as the Framers intended. 

But the filibuster is not in the Constitution. In fact, the Framers of the Constitution went to great lengths to ensure that a minority of senators could not thwart the wishes of the majority. 

After all, a major reason they called the Constitutional Convention was that the Articles of Confederation (the precursor to the Constitution) required a super-majority vote of nine of the thirteen states, making the government weak and ineffective.

James Madison argued against any super-majority requirement, writing that “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed,“ and “It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.”

Alexander Hamilton, meanwhile, warned about “how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced” if a minority in either house of Congress had “the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary.”

Hence, the Framers required no more than a simple majority vote in both houses of Congress to pass legislation. They carved out specific exceptions, requiring a super-majority vote only for rare, high-stakes decisions: 

Impeachments.

Expulsion of members.

Overriding a presidential veto.

Ratification of treaties.

Constitutional amendments.

By being explicit about these exceptions where a super-majority is necessary, the Framers underscored their commitment to majority rule for the normal business of the nation.

They would have balked at the notion of a minority of senators continually obstructing the majority, which is now the case with the filibuster. 

So where did the filibuster come from? 

The Senate needed a mechanism to end debate on proposed laws, and move laws to a vote — a problem the Framers didn’t anticipate. In 1841, a small group of senators took full advantage of this oversight to stage the first filibuster. They hoped to hamstring the Senate and force their opponents to give in by prolonging debate and delaying a vote. 

This was what became known as the “talking filibuster” as popularized in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But the results were hardly admirable.

After the Civil War, the filibuster was used by Southern politicians to defeat Reconstruction legislation, including bills to protect the voting rights of Black Americans.

In 1917, as a result of pressure from President Woodrow Wilson and the public, the Senate finally adopted a procedure for limiting debate and ending filibusters with a two-thirds vote (67 votes). In the 1970s, the Senate reduced the number of votes required to end debate down to 60, and no longer required constant talking to delay a vote. 41 votes would do it.

Throughout much of the 20th century, despite all the rule changes, filibusters remained rare. Southern senators mainly used them to block anti-lynching, fair employment, voting rights, and other critical civil rights bills.

That all changed in 2006, after Democrats won a majority of Senate seats. Senate Republicans, now in the minority, used the 60-vote requirement with unprecedented frequency. After Barack Obama became president in 2008, the Republican minority blocked virtually every significant piece of legislation. Nothing could move without 60 votes.

In 2009, a record 67 filibusters occurred during the first half of the 111th Congress — double the entire 20-year period between 1950 and 1969. By the time the 111th Congress adjourned in December 2010, the filibuster count had ballooned to 137.

Now we have a total mockery of majority rule. And it bears repeating that just 41 Senate Republicans, representing only 21 percent of the country, are blocking critical laws supported by the vast majority of Americans. 

This is exactly the opposite of what the framers of the Constitution intended. They unequivocally rejected the notion that a minority of Senators could obstruct the majority. 

Every time Republicans use or defend the filibuster they’re directly violating the Constitution — the document they claim to be dedicated to. How can someone profess to be an “originalist” and defend the Constitution while repeatedly violating it?

Senators whose votes have been blocked by a minority should have standing to take this issue to the Supreme Court. And the Court should abolish the filibuster as violating the U.S. Constitution.

For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.

The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign spending has soared while corporate taxes have shriveled.

In the 1950s, corporations accounted for about 40 percent of federal revenue. Today, they contribute a meager 7 percent. Last year, more than 50 of the largest U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes at all. Many haven’t paid taxes for years.

Both parties have been in on this deal although the GOP has been the bigger player. Yet since Donald Trump issued his big lie about the fraudulence of the 2020 election, corporate America has had a few qualms about its deal with the GOP.  

After the storming of the Capitol, dozens of giant corporations said they would no longer donate to the 147 Republican members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of the big lie.

Then came the GOP’s recent wave of restrictive state voting laws, premised on the same big lie. Georgia’s are among the most egregious. The chief executive of Coca Cola, headquartered in the peach tree state, calls those laws “wrong” and “a step backward.” The CEO of Delta Airlines, Georgia’s largest employer, says they’re “unacceptable.” Major League Baseball decided to relocate its annual All-Star Game away from the home of the Atlanta Braves.

These criticisms have unleashed a rare firestorm of anti-corporate Republican indignation. The senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, warns corporations of unspecified “serious consequences” for speaking out. Republicans are moving to revoke Major League Baseball’s antitrust status. Georgia Republicans threaten to punish Delta Airlines by repealing a state tax credit for jet fuel.

“Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations & antitrust?” asks Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Why? For the same reason Willy Sutton gave when asked why he robbed banks: That’s where the money is.

McConnell told reporters that corporations should “stay out of politics” but then qualified his remark: “I’m not talking about political contributions.” Of course not. Republicans have long championed “corporate speech” when it comes in the form of campaign cash –  just not as criticism.  

Talk about hypocrisy. McConnell was the top recipient of corporate money in the 2020 election cycle and has a long history of battling attempts to limit it. In 2010, he hailed the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, which struck down limits on corporate political donations, on the dubious grounds that corporations are “people” under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” McConnell said at the time. Hint: He wasn’t referring to poor Black people.  

It’s hypocrisy squared. The growing tsunami of corporate campaign money suppresses votes indirectly by drowning out all other voices. Republicans are in the grotesque position of calling on corporations to continue bribing politicians as long as they don’t criticize Republicans for suppressing votes directly.

The hypocrisy flows in the other direction as well. The Delta’s CEO criticized GOP voter suppression but the company continues to bankroll Republicans. Its PAC contributed $1,725,956 in the 2020 election, more than $1 million of which went to federal candidates, mostly to Republicans. Oh, and Delta hasn’t paid federal taxes for years.

Don’t let the spat fool you. The basic deal between the GOP and corporate America is still very much alive.

Which is why, despite record-low corporate taxes, congressional Republicans are feigning outrage at Joe Biden’s plan to have corporations pay for his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. Biden isn’t even seeking to raise the corporate tax rate as high as it was before the Trump tax cut, yet not a single Republicans will support it.

A few Democrats, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, don’t want to raise corporate taxes as high as Biden does, either. Yet almost two-thirds of Americans support the idea.

The basic deal between American corporations and American politicians has been a terrible deal for America. Which is why a piece of legislation entitled the “For the People Act,” passed by the House and co-sponsored in the Senate by every Democratic senator except Manchin, is so important. It would both stop states from suppressing votes and also move the country toward public financing of elections, thereby reducing politicians’ dependence on corporate cash.

Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won’t as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians.

Defeating McConnell: The Real Stakes of the Georgia Runoffs

The upcoming runoff elections in Georgia are about more than replacing two corrupt Republican senators with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. They are about flipping the Senate.

They are referenda on the disastrous tenure of Mitch McConnell and the damage the Republican Party has inflicted on America.

I don’t want to mince words. Mitch McConnell is the most duplicitous, morally bankrupt politician in America. (Well, maybe Trump beats him, but not for long.) He has wielded the GOP to inflict massive damage on our democracy.

In 2016, 293 days before the presidential election, he stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to even give President Obama’s pick a hearing, claiming it was too close to the election to fill the seat. 

But when Ruth Bader Ginsburg tragically passed away in September, 2020, he engineered the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, just 8 days before the 2020 presidential election and after 60 million Americans had already cast their ballots.

That’s not all. After blocking many of Obama’s nominees to the lower federal courts, he rammed through nearly 230 of Trump’s judicial picks, reshaping the federal courts for decades to come.

In 2017, McConnell rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and the super-rich. Despite his lofty promises, that tax cut increased the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, and failed to raise wages. Nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, McConnell has blocked nearly 400 House bills addressing major issues like a minimum wage increase, voting rights, and gun reform.

After the pandemic hit, McConnell refused to extend extra unemployment benefits beyond the end of July while insisting on giving corporations immunity from Covid lawsuits if their workers got sick. And he refused financial aid to cash-strapped state and local governments facing massive budget shortfalls — dismissing it as a “blue state bailout.”

Senate Majority Leader, McConnell also helped subvert our democracy by refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden’s win for more than a month.

Mitch McConnell cares about only one thing: Power. He has single-handedly turned the Senate into a failed institution that has abandoned the American people for partisan gain. 

And that’s what the Senate will continue to be — unless Georgia elects Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. If McConnell remains in control of the Senate, it will be impossible to enact the bold changes this nation requires.

Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are terrible politicians, but these historic elections are about more than defeating them. They’re about defeating Mitch McConnell and rebuking everything the GOP stands for. 

On January 5th, Georgians can make it happen.

As a former Secretary of Labor, I often receive mail from workers with job complaints who apparently believe I still have some authority. But the email I received a few days ago from a worker at Amazon’s Whole Foods delivery warehouse in Industry City, Brooklyn, New York, was particularly distressing.

She said that six of her co-workers had tested positive for COVID since October 22, because “safe social distancing is not only being ignored but discouraged,” adding that “when we express our discomfort to management, we are yelled at about filling orders faster, or told that we can take a leave of absence without pay.”

She ended by noting “we work for a trillionaire.”

Well, not quite. Jeff Bezos is worth $180 billion, making him the richest person in the world. And his corporation, Amazon, which also owns Whole Foods, is among the world’s richest corporations.

Bezos has accumulated so much added wealth over the last nine months that he could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic.

So you’d think he’d be able to afford safer workplaces. Yet as of October, more than 20,000 U.S.-based Amazon employees had been infected by the virus. That estimate comes from Amazon, by the way. There’s been no independent verification, nor has Amazon revealed how many of them have died.  

Decades ago, employees in most large corporations could remedy unsafe working conditions by complaining to their union, which pressured their employer to fix the problems, or to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (founded in 1970), which levied fines.

Alternatively, they could embarrass their companies by going public with their complaints. As a last resort, they could sue.

None of these routes is readily available to Amazon warehouse workers – nor, for that matter, to warehouse workers at Walmart, or to most workers in other super-spreader COVID workplaces such as meatpacking plants and nursing homes.

Amazon’s workers have no union to protect them. (Throughout its 25-year history, the corporation has aggressively fought union organizing.) Nor, for that matter, do 93.8 percent of America’s private-sector workers. Fifty years ago, more than a third were unionized.

And OSHA? Since the start of the pandemic, it’s been useless. Although receiving more than 10,000 complaints of unsafe conditions, it has issued just two citations.

Amazon employees who go public with their complaints are likely to lose their jobs. The corporation prohibits its workers from commenting publicly on any aspect of its business, without prior approval from executives. So far during the pandemic, it has fired at least two white-collar employees who publicly denounced conditions at its warehouses, as well as several warehouse workers who raised safety concerns to media outlets.

Amazon isn’t alone. A survey conducted in May by the National Employment Law Project showed that 1 in 8 American workers “has perceived possible retaliatory actions by employers against workers in their company who have raised health and safety concerns” about COVID.

The final option is to sue the company, but lawsuits against employers over COVID have been rare because of difficulties proving that the employee contracted the virus at work. A Washington Post analysis found that since the pandemic began, just 234 personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits have been filed due to the virus.

All of which reveals the utter fatuousness of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s and his fellow Senate Republicans’ demand that any new COVID relief package must include a corporate “liability shield” against COVID cases.

Even if such lawsuits were successful, corporations already have limited liability. That’s what it means to be a corporation. In the unlikely event Amazon were sued and plaintiffs won, Jeff Bezos would remain comfortable.

The heinous resurgence of COVID makes clear that corporations need more – not fewer – incentives to protect their workers from the virus.  

As millions of Americans lose whatever meager income they had, they should not have to choose between taking a risky job – such as in an Amazon warehouse – or putting food on their family’s table.

Bezos, as well as every major employer in America, can easily afford to protect their workers. And as Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans should know, the richest nation in the world can easily afford to provide every American adequate income support during this national emergency.

That they’re not doing so is disgraceful.

How Mitch McConnell’s Do Nothing Republicans are Killing You

The Senate adjourned and left town without even trying to pass a COVID disaster relief bill. By the time they return on November 30, based on current trends, an additional estimated 16,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19.

We pay these elected officials to keep us safe, and they’ve failed us. To them I ask: How much death and suffering must the American people endure before you act?

Remember: House Democrats passed a comprehensive relief bill all the way back in May. 

You, Mitch McConnell, have refused to lift a finger for months, and Senate Republicans have been happy to follow your lead.

Countless Americans are now paying the price for your malicious inaction.
You should have learned lessons about COVID during its first horrific wave last spring.

First, there’s no tradeoff between COVID and the economy, and no way to get the economy back until COVID is under control. As the virus surges and more shutdowns loom, the millions of jobs we’ve added since April are about to disappear again. I’ve said this since March and I’ll say it again: The only way to get our economy back to full strength is to control the virus.

Second, more shutdowns are necessary. Businesses like Tesla in Alameda County, California, and Tyson meat packing plants in Iowa remained open during previous shutdowns, and both companies suffered COVID outbreaks. No exceptions this time around.

Third, and most importantly, shutdowns are only viable if accompanied by disaster relief so Americans can survive financially.  So pass disaster relief.

Re-up expanded unemployment benefits. The extra $600/week provisioned in the CARES Act expired on July 31st, and all federal relief will expire on December 31st. Expanded unemployment benefits were a financial lifeline for millions during the first and second waves, and must be instituted again to keep millions out of poverty this winter. Don’t listen to people who claim that we have to get people back to work, or keep them working. The best way to stop the spread is to pay people to stay home.

Stop evictions and foreclosures. It would be the height of cruelty to force even more people out onto the streets in the middle of winter as the virus surges. And with more job losses around the corner, we must ensure that a missed rent or mortgage payment isn’t a death sentence.

Distribute another round of Paycheck Protection Program loans to businesses, with strict oversight to ensure the funds actually go to businesses that need them, not massive, publicly-traded companies that have plenty of other options. 

Shore up state and local budgets. State and local governments are facing huge budget shortfalls. Without federal aid, vital public services are on the chopping block – schools, childcare, supplemental nutrition, mental health services, low-income housing, healthcare – when the public needs them more than ever. And local governments need funds to shelter unhoused residents, especially as temperatures drop and COVID intensifies.

Protect essential workers. Tens of thousands of workers on the frontlines have contracted COVID over the past 10 months – including nearly 20,000 Amazon warehouse workers. At a minimum, they need generous hazard pay and paid sick leave.

When the last COVID relief package was passed on March 27th, there were 18,093 new cases that day. Now, there are over 100,000 new cases every day. With hospitalizations lagging behind cases, and deaths lagging behind hospitalizations, it’s clear that this is going to get much, much worse unless people shelter in place. But most Americans can’t do this without relief.

The writing is on the wall. Do your job, Mitch McConnell. Our lives depend on it. 

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation as the ninth justice on the U.S. Supreme Court is a travesty of democracy.

The vote on Barrett’s confirmation occurred just eight days before Election Day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president.”

Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. With Barrett now on the court, five of the nine justices have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.

The Republican senators who voted for her represent 15 million fewer Americans than their Democratic colleagues.

Barrett now joins 5 other reactionary justices who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation.

Barrett’s confirmation was the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural, and white segment of the U.S. population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations.

In the event Joe Biden becomes president on January 20 and both houses of Congress come under control of the Democrats, they can reverse this trend. It may be the last chance – both for the Democrats and, more importantly, for American democracy.

How?

For starters, increase the size of the Supreme Court. The Constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years, from as few as five justices under John Adams to ten under Abraham Lincoln.

Biden says if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack.” That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections.

Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation in that chamber. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass.

The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring a mere 51 votes. There’s growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged that the filibuster has become a negative force in government.

The filibuster is not in the Constitution, either.

The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate itself, as well as the Electoral College. For decades, rural states have been emptying as the U.S. population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation.

For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40 percent of Americans will live in just five states, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82.

This distortion also skews the Electoral College, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote.  

This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington, D.C.

The Constitution is also silent on the number of states.

Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power.

That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate, or the presidency, yet secured control over all three.

Amy Coney Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the Republican power grab has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy.

What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It’s representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy.  

People in public life tend to fall into one of two broad categories – those who are motivated by principle, and those motivated by power.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday night at the age of 87, exemplified the first.

When he nominated her in 1993, Bill Clinton called her “the Thurgood Marshall of gender-equality law,” comparing her advocacy and lower-court rulings in pursuit of equal rights for women with the work of the great jurist who advanced the cause of equal rights for Black people. Ginsburg persuaded the Supreme Court that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection applied not only to racial discrimination but to sex discrimination as well.

For Ginsburg, principle was everything – not only equal rights, but also the integrity of democracy. Always concerned about the consequences of her actions for the system as a whole, she advised young people “to fight for the things you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, exemplifies the second category. He couldn’t care less about principle. He is motivated entirely by the pursuit of power.

McConnell refused to allow the Senate to vote on President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, in March, 2016 – almost a year before the end of Obama’s term of office – on the dubious grounds that the “vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

McConnell’s move was a pure power grab. No Senate leader had ever before asserted the right to block a vote on a president’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

McConnell’s “principle” of waiting for a new president disappeared Friday evening, after Ginsburg’s death was announced.

Just weeks before one of the most consequential presidential elections in American history, when absentee voting has already begun in many states (and will start in McConnell’s own state of Kentucky in 25 days), McConnell announced: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

This is, after all, the same Mitch McConnell who, soon after Trump was elected, ended the age-old requirement that Supreme Court nominees receive 60 votes to end debate and allow for a confirmation vote, and then, days later, pushed through Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

Ginsburg and McConnell represent the opposite poles of public service today. The distinction doesn’t depend on whether someone is a jurist or legislator – I’ve known many lawmakers who cared more about principle than power, such as the late congressman John Lewis. It depends on values.

Ginsburg refused to play power politics. As she passed her 80th birthday, near the start of Obama’s second term, she dismissed calls for her to retire in order to give Obama plenty of time to name her replacement, saying she planned to stay “as long as I can do the job full steam,” adding “There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president.”

She hoped others would also live by principle, including McConnell and Trump. Just days before her death she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

Her wish will not be honored.

If McConnell cannot muster the senate votes needed to confirm Trump’s nominee before the election, he’ll probably try to fill the vacancy in the lame-duck session after the election. He’s that shameless.

Not even with Joe Biden president and control over both the House and Senate can Democrats do anything about this – except by playing power politics themselves: expanding the size of the court or restructuring it so justices on any given case are drawn from a pool of appellate judges.

The deeper question is which will prevail in public life: McConnell’s power politics or Ginsburg’s dedication to principle?

The problem for America, as for many other democracies at this point in history, is this is not an even match. Those who fight for power will bend or break rules to give themselves every advantage. Those who fight for principle are at an inherent disadvantage because bending or breaking rules undermines the very ideals they seek to uphold.

Over time, the unbridled pursuit of power wears down democratic institutions, erodes public trust, and breeds the sort of cynicism that invites despotism.

The only bulwark is a public that holds power accountable – demanding stronger guardrails against its abuses and voting power-mongers out of office.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg often referred to Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous quote, that “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.” Indeed.

How Mitch McConnell’s Republicans are Destroying America

Senate Republicans don’t want to extend the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits, even though unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

Even before the pandemic, nearly 80 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck. Now many are desperate, as revealed by lengthening food lines and growing delinquencies in rent payments.    

McConnell’s response? He urges lawmakers to be “cautious” about helping struggling Americans, warning that “the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.” 

McConnell seems to forget the $1.9 trillion tax cut he engineered in December 2017 for big corporations and the super-rich, which blew up the debtdeficit.  

That’s just the beginning of the GOP’s handouts for corporations and the wealthy. As soon as the pandemic hit, McConnell and Senate Republicans were quick to give mega-corporations a $500 billion blank check, while only sending Americans a paltry one-time $1,200 check.

The GOP seems to believe that the rich will work harder if they receive more money while people of modest means work harder if they receive less. In reality, the rich contribute more to Republican campaigns when they get bailed out.

That’s precisely why the GOP put into the last Covid relief bill a $170 billion windfall to Jared Kushner and other real estate moguls, who line the GOP’s campaign coffers. Another $454 billion of the package went to backing up a Federal Reserve program that benefits big business by buying up their debt.

And although the bill was also intended to help small businesses, lobbyists connected to Trump – including current donors and fundraisers for his reelection – helped their clients rake in over $10 billion of the aid, while an estimated 90 percent of small businesses owned by people of color and women got nothing.

The GOP’s shameful priorities have left countless small businesses with no choice but to close. They’ve also left 22 million Americans unemployed, and 28 million at risk of being evicted by September. 

For the bulk of this crisis, McConnell called the Senate back into session only to confirm more of Trump’s extremist judges and advance a $740 billion defense spending bill. 

Throughout it all, McConnell has insisted his priority is to shield businesses from Covid-related lawsuits by customers and employees who have contracted the virus.

The inept and overwhelmingly corrupt reign of Trump, McConnell, and Senate Republicans will come to an end next January if enough Americans vote this coming November.

But will enough people vote during a pandemic? The HEROES Act provides $3.6 billion for states to expand mail-in and early voting, but McConnell and his GOP lackeys aren’t interested. They’re well aware that more voters increase the likelihood Republicans will be booted out.

Time and again, they’ve shown that they only care about their wealthy donors and corporate backers. If they had an ounce of concern for the nation, their priority would be to shield Americans from the ravages of Covid and American democracy from the ravages of Trump. But we know where their priorities lie.

Mitch McConnell’s Do-Nothing Republicans.

Led by the self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to take up nearly 400 bills passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Here are just some of the bills dying in McConnell’s legislative graveyard:

House Democrats’ first major legislative initiative, the For the People Act, has been languishing on McConnell’s desk since March 2019. The bill tackles a host of corrupting influences in our democracy. It aims to reform campaign finance laws to curb the influence of big money, strengthen ethics laws for federal officials, and bolster voting rights by enacting automatic voter registration and ending partisan gerrymandering.

Before the bill even passed the House, McConnell declared he would not take it up in the Senate, decrying it as a “power grab that’s smelling more and more like exactly what it is.” It is a power grab — it grabs power back for the people. But McConnell is the one grabbing power away from the majority of voters, who elected members of the House to tackle real issues.

Here’s another: The Bipartisan Background Checks Act has been wasting away in McConnell’s graveyard for almost a year now. It tightens background checks on all gun sales, including private firearm purchases, online purchases, and purchases made at gun shows. McConnell also pronounced this bill dead on arrival in the Senate. Since passed in the House in February 2019, there were 371 more mass shootings that year alone. Mitch McConnell and his spineless Republican colleagues are too afraid to stand up to their NRA backers, and it’s costing Americans their lives. This is in spite of the measures having support of a vast majority of the American public.

A third item in the McConnell graveyard: House Democrats passed the Raise the Wage Act, which would lift the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, phasing in increases over seven years. This would raise the pay of 27 million Americans and lift 1.3 million households out of poverty. But as soon as the bill was passed, Mitch McConnell took to Fox News to declare, “We’re not going to be doing that in the Senate,” claiming that raising the minimum wage would hurt jobs and businesses.

Mitch McConnell and his gang of do-nothing Republican senators have also blocked legislation on climate change, the Dream Act, net neutrality, protections for the LGBTQIA community, tribal sovereignty, AND election security — the list goes on and on. 

Even the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is stalled in the Senate. 

They do all this without even a debate. Remember how you learned in school that one house passes legislation and the other considers it? McConnell is throwing those civics lessons out the window.

So what is McConnell really doing in the Senate? Ramming through a spate of unqualified, hyperpartisan judges who will shape the courts for decades to come.

Trump has so far installed 187 judges to lifetime positions on the federal bench – many with fringe, extremist views. One in four court of appeals judges are now Trump appointees, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. Who’s the architect behind this full-blown takeover of the judiciary system? Mitch McConnell, of course.

Let’s not forget that it’s thanks to McConnell that Trump was able to install two Supreme Court justices. McConnell single-handedly blocked Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016, refusing even to hold a confirmation hearing for him and keeping the seat open until Donald Trump took office. McConnell and Senate Republicans then invoked the “nuclear option” – requiring only a simple majority to confirm Supreme Court justices, and steamrolling the Democrats.

Even before Democrats gained control of the House and began passing hundreds of bills to benefit the American people, Congressional Republicans’ only significant achievement was a massive tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. Despite all their claims, their tax cut has not spurred the growth it promised, it’s added to the national debt, business investment is contracting, manufacturing is shrinking, and wages are barely rising. 

As usual, nothing has trickled down. The only winners are people who were already winners. Everyone else has been shafted. But none of that matters to McConnell and his do-nothing Republicans as long as Trump and the Party’s billionaire donors and corporate backers stay happy.

Oh, and McConnell’s do-nothing Senate Republicans refused to hold a fair and impartial impeachment trial for Trump. McConnell – who is supposed to act in the role of impartial jury foreman for the Senate – said, “And everything I do during this I’m coordinating with White House Counsel.” While Trump continues to break the law and seize power from Congress, the Senate refuses to serve as a check on his power.

America used to have a Senate that served the people. But under Mitch McConnell’s leadership, what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body has become a partisan circus. He and his Republican colleagues have done nothing to benefit the American people, ignoring the voices of their constituents to serve the will of Donald Trump and Republican fat cats. History will not be kind to them. Hopefully, come November, American voters won’t either.

Perhaps you’d expect no more from the Republican leader of the Senate who proclaimed three years ago that the GOP’s first priority was to get Obama out of the White House. But Senator Mitch McConnell’s speech Friday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington is simply bonkers.

The only reason I bring it up is because it offers an inside look at how the  Republican goal of getting rid of Obama is inextricably linked to the Republican Supreme Court’s decision equating corporations with people under the First Amendment, and to the Republican’s current determination to keep Americans in the dark about which corporations contribute what. 

In the upside-down world of regressive Republicanism, McConnell thinks proposed legislation requiring companies to disclose their campaign spending would stifle their free speech.

He describes the current push to disclose the sources behind campaign contributions as a “political weapon,” used by the Democrats, “to expose its critics to harassment and intimidation.” 

Harassment and intimidation? It used to be called accountability to shareholders and consumers.

Five members of the Supreme Court think corporations are people. Mitt Romney agrees. And now the minority leader of the Senate – the highest-ranking Republican official in America – takes this logic to its absurd conclusion: If corporations are people, they must be capable of feeling harassed and intimidated if their shareholders or consumers don’t approve of their political expenditures.

Hell, they might even throw a tantrum. Or cry. Corporations have feelings. 

This isn’t just whacko. It also defies law and logic. What are corporations anyway, separate and apart from their shareholders and consumers? Legal fictions, pieces of paper.

And whom do corporations exist for if not the people who legally own them and those who purchase the products and services they sell? 

Clearly, McConnell doesn’t want corporations to be forced to disclose their political contributions because he and other Republicans worry that some shareholders and consumers would react badly if they knew – and thereby constrain such giving.

And the reason McConnell and other Republicans don’t want any constraint on corporate political giving is most CEOs are Republicans who want to use their firms – and the money their shareholders legally own – as secret slush funds for the Republican Party, funneled through front groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS.

Such nonprofits have spent significantly more than Super PACs on elections since 2010, according to the Center for Public Integrity and Center for Responsive Politics. Nonprofits have spent $95 million on elections since 2010, while Super PACs, which are required to disclose their donors, have spent $65 million, the Centers found.

Crossroads GPS has disclosed on its tax returns that 23 donors to it have each given $1 million or more to finance its campaign activities so far this year. But Crossroads claims status as a nonprofit under IRS rules – a “social welfare” organization” that doesn’t have to disclose its donors – even though anyone with half a brain knows its overriding purpose is to influence elections.

McConnell and other Republicans conveniently forget secret campaign money was at the heart of the Watergate scandals forty years ago. And that even the Supreme Court in its heinous “Citizens United” decision upheld the constitutionality of disclosure requirements on corporations and other outside groups. 

Mitch McConnell wants to give some cover to his Republican colleagues who will be voting later this month or early next month on the bill to force full disclosure of corporate political expenses. But his speech at the American Enterprise Institute doesn’t provide cover. It cloaks the whole Republican enterprise in hypocrisy.