Sen. Johnson wants to force 10-hour reading of entire COVID bill, because he's a huge d*ck
Well, actually, he’s a Badger, not a duck. I was born in Wisconsin and currently live in Oregon. Believe me, I know the difference. And I can assure you, this guy is one enormous Johnson.
I’m really not sure what Republicans’ strategy is vis-à-vis the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that’s going to pass regardless of how many silly roadblocks they throw up. When people get their $1,400 relief checks, are they really going to wring their hands over the fiscal implications of funding museums? Nah, they’re going to spend that money, and they’ll be eager to do so.
In fact, I’ve already sent a down payment to a local artist so I can get this painted on the side of my van:
So the COVID relief bill will help everyone, including museum workers. And that’s just how it should be.
But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t going to put on an impotent clown show anyway.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a staunch Trump ally and fiery fiscal conservative, has told colleagues that he plans to force the Senate clerks to read aloud the entire $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill on the Senate floor, which could slow it down by as much as 10 hours.
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Any senator can force a reading of a bill on the floor but the formality is almost always skipped by unanimous consent to avoid wasting time.
Wait, weren’t these guys just jawboning about how the impeachment of an insurrectionist former president was a waste of time? Weren’t they talking about how we really needed to address the COVID pandemic? I’m starting to think they weren’t all that serious. Hmm.
Ron Johnson is the kid who raises his hand at the end of class to inform the teacher she forgot to give out homework. Sadly, there are no lockers in the corridors of the Capitol building to shove him into, and I can only assume he’s worn wedgie-resistant underpants since at least middle school.
Maybe he’s just trying to out-asshole Ted Cruz. Or maybe he’s trying to make a stupid point that literally no one but Ron Johnson will remember.
Either way, they’re running out of excuses that make sense. Republicans have harshly criticized two measures in the House bill. One of these would have sent $141 million to San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system, and another would have earmarked $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York state to Canada. Naturally, they focused on those two projects so they could shoehorn Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s names into all their talking points.
But those projects have since been removed in the Senate version of the bill.
“Now that the two projects that Republicans misled the public about in the House bill have been removed, it is unclear how Republicans will justify their opposition to the American Rescue Plan, which has strong bipartisan support among the public,” said senior Pelosi aide Drew Hammill.
“It just delays things a day,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “I feel sorry for the reading clerk.”
I feel sorry for the reading clerk, too, but if Johnson reads the bill himself it will take another month, and we need to pass this thing tout de suite.
You see, we were forced to navigate this awful pandemic without a sober or serious navigator for nearly a year, and so we need to rebuild. Naturally, that means helping people and juicing our economy while a Democrat occupies the White House—two things Republicans are diametrically opposed to.
This opposition is 100 percent about cutting President Biden off at the knees (like they did with President Obama in 2009), and nothing at all to do with principle. But, hey, when you have no real principles, you have to find imaginative ways to pretend that you do.
Unfortunately, Ron Johnson is a world-class dullard with very little imagination. But he tries. Oh, lordy, does he ever. I wish I could say it was adorable how hard he tries, but it’s just not.
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