Trump explodes stimulus bill, leaving Washington scrambling, millions in doubt

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President Trump sat out the first four quarters and then dropped a bomb in overtime, threatening to blow up the Christmas package that Congress had finally cobbled together to ease the pain of the pandemic.

The move, which took some of his own staffers by surprise, infuriated everyone--that is, except the Democrats, who have wanted all along to boost the size of the stimulus checks.

Along with the 20 pardons and commutations to three former GOP congressmen, two Russia probe figures and four Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians, Trump furnished dramatic evidence of why a president is always powerful, even in the waning days of his term.

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But he also reminded Washington that his disruptive style can frustrate even his own party and longtime allies, and create uncertainty for tens of millions of struggling Americans who now worry they’re getting a lump of coal.

Trump even got in a stolen-election dig, saying if the Hill doesn’t revise the bill "the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package. And maybe that administration will be me."

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But here’s the twist: Some of Trump’s substantive objections are right on target. Had he weighed in earlier, he probably could have gotten some of what he wanted. But he let Steve Mnuchin conduct endless negotiations with Nancy Pelosi, only to undercut his Treasury chief--who praised the final deal as a great birthday present for him--once the House and Senate approved the measure.

Trump’s style from his real estate days is to throw a monkey wrench into the talks at the last minute, or even after a deal has been signed. But that’s when he was a participant. Mitch McConnell, who didn’t want any direct stimulus checks, compromised on $600 and dragged the bill across the finish line.

So on Tuesday night, Trump drops a video calling the measure a "disgrace" and says the Hill should amend it to "increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000."

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He’s right on that last point. Given the severe damage to the economy, the stimulus checks should at least have matched the $1,200 that went out last spring. But 600 bucks was as high as the negotiators could go as each party surrendered on some of its demands.

Other than a single mention a while back that he’d prefer $2,000 checks, Trump waited until the bill was ready to be sent to his desk.

Dems are in a celebratory mood. "Let’s do it!" Pelosi tweeted. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Or Congress could override a presidential veto, although Trump never explicitly threatened that. The whole thing is a muddle, which may be what he wanted.

As for the provisions Trump finds objectionable, he is conflating two things: the $900-billion Covid bill and a routine, $1.4-trillion measure that funds the government through Sept. 30. The Hill opted to pass them together.

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So when Trump questions the spending on foreign aid, or money for the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian museums, that is not part of the Covid relief.

We all know that Congress creates these Christmas trees in every rushed spending bill and that only powerful special interests and well-connected lobbyists get to hang ornaments on. And that it is pathetic (as both Ted Cruz and AOC agree) to ask members to digest more than 5,500 pages of legislation in a few hours.

But at times the president plays the same game: He said that deductions for business meals (the famous three-martini lunch) should be extended not for two years, as in the legislation, but for a longer period of time.

He also lodged an objection, that would be popular with his base, that would allow some family members of illegal immigrants to claim virus relief benefits.

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And how’s this one, highlighted by the New York Times, for an outrage? Tens of thousands of businesses had their original Covid loans forgiven if they kept new hires on the payroll. But in what could cost the feds $200 billion, such firms convinced Congress to let them double dip by now deducting those free loans from their taxes. 

This is very different, by the way, of Trump’s actual veto yesterday of a defense authorization bill, in that he had repeatedly warned of such action over the failure to abolish legal immunity for social media companies and the renaming of bases honoring Confederate leaders. 

Maybe the Covid threat will be a mere footnote, with with Congress agreeing to some fuzzy compromise about revisiting these issues next year. But Trump again made his presence felt in his inimitable fashion, at this high-stakes moment, leaving it to others to sweat the details.

While McConnell was holding a Republican conference call, the Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted that he had told colleagues he spoke to Trump, who hadn’t decided whether to veto the bill. The majority leader promptly complained that someone was leaking to the Times while they were still talking.