5 ways Senate GOP is trying to sabotage Biden's presidency before it even begins

They’ve barely accepted that Joe Biden is president-elect, but Senate Republicans are already plotting ways to hamstring Biden’s presidency from Day 1.

Currently, Senate Republicans are holding up a desperately needed coronavirus relief bill because they want to add a provision that would prevent Biden’s Treasury Secretary-designate Janet Yellen from using emergency lending power to help the economic recovery.

“We almost have a bipartisan COVID package, but at the last minute Republicans are making a demand that WAS NEVER MENTIONED AS KEY TO THE NEGOTIATIONS. They want to block the FED from helping the economy under Biden. It’s the reason we don’t have a deal,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) tweeted Friday morning. Congressional leaders are trying to tie the coronavirus relief legislation to a government funding bill, which is set to expire at midnight unless Congress acts.

But trying to sneak in a last-minute provision that would curtail Biden’s tools to help boost the ailing economy Donald Trump is leaving in his wake is not the only vindictive move Senate Republicans are taking to kneecap Biden’s tenure before it even begins.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune suggested Thursday that his party will not pass any new coronavirus relief once Biden takes office — which could further hamper the economic recovery needed after Trump’s failed response led to massive unemployment and 8 million Americans forced into poverty.

What’s more, Republicans are finding absurd and hypocritical excuses to block Biden’s highly qualified Cabinet picks.

For example, they want to block Biden’s nominee for the Office of Management and Budget because she has tweeted criticism of Republicans. Meanwhile, they looked the other way as Trump tweeted nasty insults — including about his fellow Republicans — for more than four years, using the ridiculous excuse that they didn’t see the tweets.

Senate Republicans are also signaling they will once again care about the national debt to block some of Biden’s policy goals. However, the GOP-controlled Senate has spent the last four years under Trump passing debt-busting laws — including a tax cut for the rich that a new study found did not help at all with making life better for the middle and lower classes.

And the GOP-run Senate is also confirming a spate of Trump nominees in the lame duck session for positions that have laid vacant for long stretches of time, denying Biden the opportunity to fill those roles when he takes office.

Actively working to stop a Democratic president from accomplishing anything — even if it would better the lives of their own constituents — is the modus operandi of congressional Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously vowed to block then-President Barack Obama’s agenda at all costs to ensure his failure as president.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” he said of the GOP in 2010, ahead of the midterm elections.

Of course, Obama went on to win a second term in 2012, defeating now-GOP Sen. Mitt Romney.

However, McConnell continued his obstruction, even after Obama won reelection, by blocking over 100 judicial vacancies from being filled, including, most infamously, a Supreme Court seat that sat empty for more than a year so that Trump could fill it.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.