What changed their minds?

President’s Joe Biden’s signature on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is going to be the only place on the urgently needed covid-19 relief package with his name. Unlike his predecessor, who slapped “President Donald J. Trump” on millions of paper checks (and also put his jagged John Hancock on 90 million letters sent to mailboxes), Biden is forgoing the self-promotion.

That’s an insignificant change from the earlier rounds of economic help from a united Washington to a nation suffering from covid-inflicted massive unemployment, flat-broke state and local governments, closed businesses and depleted household savings. But a huge difference between now and then is the total lack of Republican support this time. There wasn’t a single GOP member of the House or Senate who voted for the bill.

Not one out of 211 in the House or 50 senators.

Their arguments against growing the debt, against government handouts, against jobless compensation as a disincentive to work, against checks going to the fully employed, against fueling inflation all could have been made during round one or two or three or four of the covid-19 bailouts of 2020. But those were under a Republican president and a Republican Senate, and the GOP voted in unison with the Democrats on passage again and again.

Maybe if Biden had promised to put Don’s name on the $1,400 checks, Trump’s loyal followers would have voted for it.