Donald Trump cut Democrats off at the knee by signing a series of executive orders to provide coronavirus relief on Saturday. Congressional legislators could not come to a timely agreement, so Trump took action.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is understandably infuriated by Trump’s decision and attacked Trump’s executive action as “unconstitutional slop” in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.
Knives out
“No, in fact, what the president did is — I agreed what the Republican senator said — is unconstitutional slop,” Pelosi, said, referring to GOP Sen. Ben Sasse’s (R-NE) assessment of the orders.
Trump’s orders establish a payroll tax cut from August 1 through the end of the year for those making less than $100,000 per year, establish an eviction moratorium, a $400-per-week addendum to the Paycheck Protection Program, and provide student loan relief.
Legislative action on those same issues has been languishing in the chambers of Congress for months — per Pelosi’s design — and Democrat legislators are furious that the president has stolen their trump card.
Pelosi highlighted the “weakness” of Trump’s actions in her appearance with Wallace.
“While it has the illusion of saying we’re going to have a moratorium on evictions, it says I’m gonna ask the folks in charge to study if that’s feasible,” Pelosi said. “While he says he’s going to do the payroll tax, what he’s doing is undermining Social Security and Medicare, so these are illusions.”
Pelosi nitpicked that the orders “don’t give the money in enhanced benefits, but puts a complicated formula there which will take a while, if at all, to accomplish to put money in the pockets of the American people.”
Failed negotiations
Nancy Pelosi has been leading House negotiations with the White House along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), but has refused to actually negotiate for weeks.
Pelosi and Schumer have repeatedly rejected White House offers without presenting an alternative. The pair also rejected any type of short-term unemployment relief, despite relentlessly hitting the president for being unwilling to come up with a solution.
Democrat leadership refused to consider chopping any of their pet projects in order to come to an agreement with the White House, and that strategy has now backfired. “Today’s meager announcements by the president show President Trump still does not comprehend the seriousness or the urgency of the health and economic crises facing working families,” Pelosi and Schumer fumed in a joint statement released on Saturday.
“We’re disappointed that instead of putting in the work to solve Americans’ problems, the President instead chose to stay on his luxury golf course to announce unworkable, weak and narrow policy announcements to slash the unemployment benefits that millions desperately need and endanger seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.”
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