Bipartisan dysfunction fuels reckless spending
Program has no wins in Big Ten tournament since 2015-’16
After the Senate passed the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” President Joe Biden came out to take a bow. This measure came “not a moment too soon,” he said. “For over a year, the American people were told they were on their own.”
This is the kind of thing presidents say when partisanship defines reality.
One of the hallmarks of hyper-partisanship is to live entirely in the moment. The nearest weapon to hand is fair game. Precedents only matter as a way to show that the other side is hypocritical for violating them. The past itself is a foreign country with no power over the “fierce urgency of now,” as Barack Obama liked to say, borrowing from Martin Luther King Jr.
Because Donald Trump lived in the moment, with no historical memory and no foresight beyond the life span of a tweet, his administration was a constant demonstration of this dynamic. For example, he frequently insisted that the military had been run into the ground under his predecessor — “We had no ammunition!” — and that he completely rebuilt it. Neither were true.
Biden may have a longer memory and broader time horizon, but he’s acting like a player in the same game. When his administration took office, it immediately floated the claim that nothing had been done to combat the pandemic and that they would have to start “from scratch.” The simple fact that about a million people per day were getting vaccinated when Biden was sworn in proves that was wrong.
Similarly, the idea that Americans have been told they were “on their own” is claptrap. The $1.9 trillion is just the latest installment in an unprecedented spending spree. This time last year, Congress passed the CARES Act, which spent more than $2 trillion on relief. In December, Congress extended the act to the tune of an additional $900 billion. That’s slightly more than the entire GDP of Turkey.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fairly chastised the Democrats for passing another round of massive spending on a party-line vote. “In 2020, we passed five historic pandemic rescue packages totaling $4 trillion,” he said. “Not one of them got fewer than 90 votes in the Senate or about 80% of the House.”
No one told Americans they were “on their own.”
McConnell is also right that it would take a hernia-inducing effort to connect some of the rescue plan’s provisions to the pandemic, such as $130 billion for
K-12 education, even though $113 billion of education subsidies from earlier relief packages are still unspent. There’s $30.5 billion for mass transit, including $1.7 billion for Biden’s beloved Amtrak. No wonder House Majority Whip James Clyburn has said the pandemic creates “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
Indeed, the idea that this package comes “not a moment too soon” for an ailing economy is preposterous. Yes, there are millions of Americans suffering from the economic consequences of the pandemic, but signs point to an economy about to skyrocket. Employment is surging, and
U.S. households have $1.6 trillion in excess savings they are probably dying to dip into once they get the all-clear. Relief targeted where needed isn’t just defensible, it’s necessary. It would also cost vastly less than $1.9 trillion.
But the dilemma for McConnell, and Republicans generally, is that this is the world they helped create. Under Trump, spending and debt exploded, even before the pandemic. And while McConnell has a point about the bipartisan nature of COVID-19 relief efforts, he would be hard-pressed to show other examples of significant bipartisanship when he was majority leader under Trump.
That isn’t to say this story begins with Trump. One could tell a similar tale about the George W. Bush and Obama eras. Indeed, that’s the point. The partisan need for wins at any cost, as fast as possible — fueled by a fear that party members only have so much time before voters punish them for overreaching by electing another set of partisans who will then overreach — has created bipartisan dysfunction. Complaints about debt and spending lose credibility when politicians spout them only when it’s the other party doing the borrowing and spending.
Voters have noticed. The Biden administration likes to point out that while the bill passed along partisan lines in Congress, it enjoys bipartisan support with the public. And why shouldn’t it?
If you spend decades flip-flopping on debt and spending, depending on whether or not you’re in power, you shouldn’t be shocked if voters say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Send me my money.”
No one has been untouched.
Not the Michigan woman who awakened one morning, her wife dead by her side. Not the North Carolina mother who struggled to keep her business going amid rising anti-Asian ugliness. Not the sixth grader, exiled from the classroom in the blink of an eye. It happened a year ago. “I expected to go back after that week,” said Darelyn Maldonado, now 12. “I didn’t think that it would take years.”
On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, few could foresee the long road ahead or the many ways in which they would suffer — the deaths and agonies of millions, the ruined economies, the disrupted lives and near-universal loneliness and isolation.
A year later, some are dreaming of a return to normal, thanks to vaccines that seemed to materialize as if by magic. Others live in places where the magic seems to be reserved for wealthier worlds.
On March 11, 2020, confirmed cases of COVID19 stood at 125,000, and reported deaths stood at fewer than 5,000. Today, more than 117 million people are confirmed to have been infected, and according to Johns Hopkins University,
more than 2.6 million people have died.
On that day, Italy closed shops and restaurants after locking down in the face of 10,000 reported infections. The NBA suspended its season, and Tom Hanks, filming a movie in Australia, announced he was infected.
That evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation, announcing restrictions on travel from Europe that set off a trans-Atlantic scramble. Airports flooded with unmasked crowds in the days that followed. Soon, they were empty.
And that, for much of the world, was just the beginning.
Today, thanks to her vaccination, Maggie Sedidi, 59, is optimistic: “By next year, or maybe the year after, I really do hope that people will be able to begin returning to normal life.”
But it is a hard-earned optimism.
Sedidi, a nurse at Soweto’s Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, the largest hospital in South Africa and the entire continent, recalls she was devastated when the first cases appeared there last March.
And she recalls being terrified when she got COVID-19. Her manager fell ill at the same time and died.
“You can imagine, I was really, really frightened. I had all the symptoms, except dying,” she said.
Her recuperation period was lengthy.
“I had shortness of breath and tightness of the chest. It lasted for six months,” she said. “I didn’t think it would ever go away.”
Latoria Glenn-Carr and her wife of six years, Tyeisha, were diagnosed Oct. 29 at a hospital emergency room near their home outside Detroit. Despite Latoria’s qualms, they were sent home.
Tyeisha, 43, died in bed next to her wife three days later.
One month later, COVID19 killed Glenn-Carr’s mother too.
In quiet times, in prayer, Glenn-Carr thinks she should have pushed for the hospital to keep Tyeisha, or should have taken her to a different hospital. She is also angry at America’s leaders — in particular, Trump, who she believes was more worried about the economy than people’s lives.
She joined a survivor’s group for people who lost loved ones to COVID19. They meet weekly on Zoom, text each other and help with the grieving process. Glenn-Carr knows she will dread birthdays and Mother’s Days that will go uncelebrated.
“Nothing goes back to the way it was,” she said.
Life pivoted for Maldonado last March during her library class. She recalls sitting at a table with her close friends, talking with the teacher about COVID19. The teacher told them their school in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, would be shutting down — briefly, she said.
In the 12 months since, she has lived in limbo and online.
A year from now, she pictures herself doing all the things she missed in this pandemic year.
“Playing outside with friends, playing softball,” she said. “Being with the people that I love most.”
The raw emotions were still fresh Sunday for Aaron Wiggins less than an hour after a five-point loss to Penn State on Senior Night that Maryland men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon described as “devastating” several times.
But the junior guard was still confident and delivered a declaration to the people who inevitably would begin to question the team’s late-season surge, which included five straight wins before two close losses.
“I don’t think the five-game win streak that we had was a fluke,” Wiggins said.
Despite the disappointing end to the regular season, the Terps (15-12, 9-11 Big Ten) can look forward to a quick chance at redemption in a venue that has foiled Maryland teams in recent years. The eighth-seeded Terps will play ninth-seeded Michigan State (15-11, 9-11) in the second round of the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis at 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
Maryland beat the Spartans at Xfinity Center by 18 in late February, but since dropping to 4-9 in conference play, Michigan State has won five of its past seven, including victories over top-10 teams Ohio State, Illinois and Michigan.
The Terps haven’t won a conference tournament game since the 2015-16 season, the longest current drought in the Big Ten, but Thursday serves as a chance to end that
losing streak and build confidence ahead of what they hope will be an NCAA tournament appearance. Selection Sunday is March
14 and the tournament begins with the First Four on March 18.
“I imagine we probably could have won one last year, right?” Turgeon said Wednesday, referring to the coronavirus pandemic forcing the cancellation of the 2020 Big Ten tournament. “I’m not concerned about what’s happened in the past. I’m just concerned about going there and doing the best we can. We’re playing a heck of a team, one of the hottest teams in the country, beat two [projected] one seeds [Illinois, Michigan] and a two seed [Ohio State] here lately. We just need to go there and play well. [There are] really good teams in the Big Ten. It’s hard to win in March. But it’s about this year, not the past.”
And yet, it’s still not lost on returning players what was taken from them a year ago. Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the program’s first Big Ten regular-season title, a celebratory afternoon they envisioned would propel them to a lengthy run in the NCAA tournament. Four days later, the Big Ten canceled its conference tournament, along with all other sports competitions, as the magnitude of COVID-19 began to be understood.
“It’s crazy how we had everything taken from us within a couple days after the 8th of March last year,” Wiggins said. “Definitely excited to have postseason here and to be able to participate in it. Guys are ready to go and take care of business in Indianapolis.”
When Turgeon was asked if he thought his team had accomplished enough to earn an at-large bid, he said he thought Maryland was “clearly in.”
“I think we’re in, no matter what happens,” he said. “We’re in the best league in the country, we won nine games, beat four Top 25 teams. Beat a [projected] one seed [Illinois] and Purdue could end up being a three or four [seed]. So, do I think we’ve done enough? Absolutely. But I’m not on the [selection] committee. …
“To me, it’s more about the regular season than it is this [conference] tournament to get into the NCAA tournament. We could have went a lot of directions that weren’t great. And we just kept battling, kept fighting, and every time we’d lose, I’d say, ‘Guys, I’m going to figure it out. I’ll make us better. You guys keep working.’ For where we are as a program and the league that we’re in, I feel like we’ve done enough.”
Turgeon said the team plans to stay in Indianapolis through the start of the NCAA tournament, with the entirety of the 68-team field set to play games in sites across the city. And depending on which bracket projections you look at, the five-game winning streak during the final month of the regular season, coupled with its early-season wins over ranked opponents, has already solidified Maryland’s spot in the tournament. An aggregation of over 100 bracket projections by The Bracket Project lists the Terps’ average position as a No. 10 seed.
Regardless, at least one win in the conference tournament would likely make the extended stay leading up to Selection Sunday a little less uneasy.
“Our guys have good attitudes,” Turgeon said. “It’s Michigan State. They’ve been the team in our league for the last four years or five years, I don’t even know how long since we’ve been in the league. … Our guys will be pretty fired up tomorrow at 11:30.”