It’s been clear to me for a long time that on a host of issues, our politcal class would rather have problems to run on than solve those problems. Off the top of my head, the Border and Gun Violence are the most obvious examples. But there are more and the list gets longer every day.
A perfect example is the new Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color bill co-sponsored by Raphael Warnock out of Georgia and Cory “Spartacus” Booker. Everyone, including these two gentlemen, knows that a bill which uses race as the sole characteristic for qualifying someone for Government aid will never pass Constitutional muster. But when having the issue to run on is more valuable for your own narrow self-interest than solving the issue, that outcome is precisely the goal.
Booker wants to run for President (again) and Warnock has a very tough re-election fight coming up in 18 months. Both men know that to separate from the pack they need to gin up their base, and the best (quickest) way to do that is with anger. This bill won’t solve a damn thing, but it’s absolutely guaranteed to piss people off. And in the world of politics, anger is like gold. It drives ratings, donations, and voting like nothing else short of straight up cash which is, for now anyway, illegal.
Booker and Warnock would much rather spend the next year saying “we were prepared to write a bunch of really big checks to African-American farmers but those destardly racist Republicans wouldn’t let us” than actually get releif payments to those farmers. Getting aid to those who need it would be a one day story and wouldn’t move the needle a single inch next Fall when everyone would have forgotten about it.
And the realilty is that even if they ultimately win in court, and let’s face it you can’t really trust this “Conservative” Court when the chips are down, can you?, by the time the money would start to flow, most of these Farmers will have either solved their financial problems or they will have gone under.
I’m sure there are ways to immediately get cash to those who need it most, but the sad truth is that Booker and Warnock aren’t interested in figuring out what they might be, they just want the issue for their own sordid reasons. Spread this sad reality out across the whole Government and across a vast array of critical issues and it quickly becomes clear why partisan rancor is getting worse even while Government’s record for solving the Nation’s problems swirls around the drain.