Wwhen senator Josh Hawley voiced his support late last year for giving millions of Americans $ 2,000, he said he received a phone call from senator Bernie Sanders’ camp. What followed was the formation of one of Capitol Hill’s odd political couples, as Republican Trumpist in Missouri and Socialist Democrat in Vermont teamed up to make a public push for a common priority.
That partnership could have continued last week, with another Hawley announcement linking him to Sanders and other progressives: his support for requiring companies with revenues of $ 1 billion or more to pay their workers a minimum hourly wage. $ 15.
But, of course, something quite important has happened since Hawley and Sanders joined forces. The Missouri Republican has been a supporter and amplifier of the theories of former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy to unjustly lose the 2020 election – theories that fueled the deadly attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on January 6th. photo, Hawley was pictured raising his fist in solidarity with those gathered outside the Capitol that morning. When the Senate met after the crowd was released, Hawley was the only senator to speak in favor of objecting to Electoral College certification.
So when Hawley launched its minimum wage plan on Friday, no public or private effort to work with progressives followed. There was no continuation of the fight for $ 2,000 checks. Hawley told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that he had not received any calls from Sanders or any fellow Democrats about the proposal, nor had he spoken to any of them about it. Meanwhile, Sanders declined to say whether he even spoke to Hawley, saying only in response to questions that Democrats have gone from an effort to force companies to pay a $ 15 salary on their COVID bill. A source close to Sanders confirmed that the two men did not talk about the proposed change to require companies to pay a minimum wage of $ 15.
“I do not believe [Democrats] I especially want to work with anyone.”
– Josh Hawley
Asked if Democrats want to work with him right now, Hawley said, “I don’t think they want to work with anyone in particular.”
But that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Senator Jon Ossoff – the Georgia Democrat who won the Senate race on the same day Hawley encouraged the mob that attacked her – told The Daily Beast on Tuesday: “I will not rule out working with any colleagues.” He said he would be open to considering Hawley’s proposal, adding: “I am encouraged that there is interest among Republican senators in taking steps to increase salaries.”
Since Jan. 6, Democrats have been considering how they could normally work again with more than 150 Republicans in Congress who voted to object to the 2020 election results and who have spread conspiracies that President Joe Biden did not win them fairly. Relations on Capitol Hill, usually unusual, were strained, with explosions and personal attacks during committee hearings. Some Democratic lawmakers now keep lists of who they can work with and who they can’t, based on votes after the Jan. 6 attack.
But Hawley’s case could be a unique test of the new tense atmosphere on Capitol Hill. For some Democrats, no other high-quality GOP MP is associated with the January 6 events. Among many, especially activists, Hawley is now a firm persona non grata – a contemptuous figure who has fully earned a career as an outcast. “Josh Hawley has a lot to answer for,” said Joe Sanberg, a California businessman and salary advocate. “I don’t think it’s a relevant part of the conversation about the straight fight for the minimum wage for 22 million people earning less than $ 15 an hour.”
But few, if any, occupy the space on the political spectrum that the Republican of the Year has bet on – a space that has placed Hawley to find, on occasion, common ground with the progressives.
In addition to the $ 2,000 check-in campaign and the minimum wage proposal, Hawley introduced legislation to require colleagues to pay off the debts of students who lose their credits and bills to curb pharmaceutical prices. He was an open critic of Wall Street and corporate America, albeit from a conservative perspective, but in ways that found him occasionally hitting notes similar to some on the left.
For many progressives who might be inclined to agree with some of Hawley’s proposals, caution and skepticism prevailed over the ambitious senator’s populist overtures. Many have noticed that his brand of populism is animated by a nationalist, anti-immigration sentiment, which he considers xenophobic or even racist; others simply do not take his positions too seriously.
“I’ve always been extremely skeptical about it,” said Marshall Steinbaum, a professor of economics at the University of Utah, who focuses on inequality, work and antitrust issues. “It’s not a matter of making a common cause with strange political bedfellows … I certainly think that having Hawley in a supposed coalition discredits that coalition.”
But other Democrats have welcomed the emergence of Republicans who could potentially help them promote economic policies for workers they have campaigned for for years. Clearly, Sanders previously believed that working with Hawley could help provide direct assistance to people affected by the pandemic. “We are working on bipartisan legislation,” Sanders said in a December Senate speech. “And Senator Hawley did a very, very good job in that regard.”
Hawley, meanwhile, was a vocal critic of the “radical left.” But when Sanders partnered last year, he told reporters, “Hey, like I said, I’ll work with anyone.”
The senators’ efforts in terms of stimulus controls have prompted commentators to raise their eyebrows – at an “emerging left-right populist alliance”, as Washington Post Said Greg Sargent. Finally, the bill passed on Dec. 26 did not exceed what the duo demanded, with direct checks of just $ 600, and a separate independent vote for the $ 2,000 checks they received. promoted later was blocked by the GOP leadership in the Senate. But that full amount will almost certainly come eventually, with the Democrat-controlled Congress sending $ 1,400 in direct payments as part of a new aid plan this month.
“He has a terrible judgment. He always tries to move to where he thinks the political winds are – when you move with political winds without any moral center, he takes you straight to the hurricanes.”
– Joe Sanberg, minimum wage lawyer
The new round of relief was another abstraction when Capitol Hill was torn down on Jan. 6, the very day Democrats sealed the Senate majority. After that, seven Senate Democrats called on the Senate Ethics Committee to open an investigation to get a “complete account” of the role of Hawley and Senate Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the day’s events. Arguing that “they have given legitimacy to the cause of the crowd and made future violence more likely,” the senators said the body will determine whether Republicans violated the rules and therefore deserved punishment – including expulsion. Sanders was not at the letter.
In response, Hawley accused Democrats of trying to “cancel” him and filed his own complaint on the ethics panel about their letter.
Senator Missouri continued to play virtually no role in shaping the COVID aid plan that developed after Biden took office. Most Democrats in the Senate have avoided saying they will never work with him again, but no one is in a hurry to work with him.
Hawley, however, tried to get some of the ongoing incentive action, in particular on the minimum wage, which became a key point of the current aid plan. In addition to proposing a $ 15 billion requirement for hourly pay of $ 15, Hawley has launched what he called a “Blue-Collar Bonus,” a tax credit designed to give employees of smaller companies a way to reach the 15 USD. threshold, at the expense of the government. Critics said the structure of its plan would give companies huge gaps to avoid paying a fair wage.
It also explicitly excludes non-citizens and undocumented workers – a nonstarter for Democrats and a sign for progressives like Sanberg that it is impossible to accept something good in Hawley’s proposals without taking over the evil. “She has a terrible judgment. He always tries to move where he thinks the political winds are – when you move with political winds without any moral center, he takes you straight to the hurricanes, ”he said.
But Pete d’Alessandro, Iowa’s former top Sanders political adviser, said there was sometimes no choice. “Won’t you work with every senator who thinks we still need to look at the election?” The Daily Beast told him. “Because there is more to Hawley than that. If you buy what Congress should do, if you attract these buckets, there won’t be a lot of people to work with at some point. ”