PLEASE NOTE: All are invited to read and respond to this thread, but please respect that it is a discussion thread, rather than a debate thread. I have placed it in the "Law" sub-forum solely because there was no better place was available for it.
In the first six minutes of the video, Saagar Enjeti -- a populist political commentator -- provides a witty, but factual history of how Americans were recently denied $2000 pandemic relief stimulus checks.
For many readers, the shenanigans involved in crushing the single most popular political initiative in recent memory will be old and familiar to them. Standard Operating Procedure for how political elites kill bills and ideas that are too popular to vote down in a straight-forward manner.
But some readers might be unfamiliar with how it's done, so I'll mention the gist of it. The basic plan is to prevent the popular idea from being presented to the House or Senate in a 'clean bill'. A 'clean bill' is a single-issue bill. When clean bills are voted on, the public is provided with clear and hard evidence of exactly where their elected representatives stand on an issue. Consequently, when politicians want to shoot down an idea that's exceedingly popular with the people they tack to it other, unrelated, and much more obnoxious measures. This allows them to piously claim that they would have voted for the idea, except they could not in all good conscience allow the other measures to also pass. It's a simple idea, but it's used again and again and again for an obvious reason. It works.
In the final analysis, the reason Americans did not get $2000 checks to help them out during the worst year in living memory is because one man -- Mitch McConnell -- did not want them to have the checks, and thus tacked on to the bill that would have given them the checks a couple of obnoxious measures.
But the fuller story is that McConnell could have been defeated had not -- at various times -- everyone from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer to Trump himself stuck their thumbs into the process in order to screw up possibility that Americans might actually get substantial help.
Major Take-Away: You can't just vote someone into office and then look away, expecting them to represent your interests. You've got to both vote them into office and then force them to do go to work for you, rather than go to work for their major campaign donors and the special interests, etc.
