Beware when GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell says, as he did yesterday, “We ought … to begin to think about the implications to the country’s future with this level of national debt.” In effect, he is saying that the growth of the national debt is about to become the rationale, or should I say cudgel, used by Senate Republicans to block future appropriations to address the deepening crisis conditions across the country as a result of the pandemic and a collapsing economy. Austerity is once again on the Republican agenda!

“Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
You spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well, don’t waste your time waiting

This sound about right. According to the NYT Maggie Haberman, the so called “protest rallies” against the stay at home orders of a handful of governors “have been relatively small and scattershot, organized by conservative-leaning groups with some organic attendance. It remains to be seen if they will be durable.”

Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is a favorite target of Trump. She’s “that women” and worse in Trump’s words. Consistent with past form, he goes nasty when he is challenged by a women. The only good thing that comes out of this Trump’s routine misogynist behavior is the sight of Michigan women wearing shirts, inscribe with “That Woman'” across the front.

Much more needs to be done. But expect push back from Republicans in opposing new appropriations for states, cities, and the tens of millions of people in need. Even the money appropriated for small business is ending up, for example, in the hands of big restaurants chains. If Trump and the Republicans had their way, the stimulus measures would go nearly exclusively to their biggest supporters in the corporate world. Is there a better example of crony capitalism.