Moscow Mitch sacrifices Kentucky coal-miners to help out Oleg Deripaska
by digby
In the recent Kentucky Governor's election, the Democrat did surprisingly well in coal country. Mitch McConnell may have some problems there as well:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a measure that would have funded pensions and health care for coal miners in his home state of Kentucky, not long after steering almost the same Treasury Department funds to an aluminum plant linked to a Russian oligarch.
The Kentucky Republican doesn’t like the “Moscow Mitch” nickname that’s been stuck to him, but these latest revelations might make it difficult to shed, reported The Daily Beast.
McConell voted in January to lift sanctions on Rusal, a Russian aluminum company formerly headed by Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, and just days after the Treasury Department officially de-listed the company — it announced a $200 million investment in an aluminum plant in northeastern Kentucky.
Democrats have raised questions about how much McConnell knew about the investment before he voted to lift sanctions, but a Braidy Industries spokesperson told The Daily Beast the company never lobbied Congress about sanctions, and said no employee or director of the company ever spoke to McConell about Rusal, the only outside investor in the plant.
But, the website reported, McConnell’s connection to the Rusal-Braidy deal is deeper than previously understood.
While Rusal was lobbying the Trump administration to remove sanctions, the Kentucky Republican was pushing for federal funds to be used to help build the Braidy plant near Ashland, back in his home state.
The federal government has been giving Appalachian states millions of dollars since 2016 to help clean up abandoned coal mining land, and to assist in economic development there.
But McConnell and other Kentucky lawmakers, including Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), helped steer $4 million away from sewer and road repair in October 2018 to preparing for construction on the aluminum plant.
It’s not clear when Braidy Industries and Rusal began, but two sources with direct knowledge told The Daily Beast that McConnell was instrumental in helping them secure the federal funding that had been earmarked for community development in his state.
McConnell then blocked a bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that would have pumped $4 million federal money into miner pensions.
He says the funding should be part of a different bill and is whining that this criticism is just terribly unfair. But McConnell is well-known to be the most powerful man in the US Congress and excuses don't really fly.
And, by the way, the so-called "do nothing" congress that Trump goes on about day after day, is really the "do-nothing GOP Senate."
The House has passed almost 400 bills the vast majority of which are sitting in the Senate going nowhere:
There’s a pervasive sense of legislative paralysis gripping Capitol Hill. And it’s been there long before the impeachment inquiry began.
For months, President Donald Trump has fired off tweet missives accusing House Democrats of “getting nothing done in Congress,” and being consumed with impeachment.
Trump may want to look to the Republican-controlled Senate instead. Democrats in the House have been passing bills at a rapid clip; as of November 15, the House has passed nearly 400 bills, not including resolutions.
But the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee estimates 80 percent of those bill have hit a snag in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is prioritizing confirming judges over passing bills.
Congress has passed just 70 bills into law this year. Granted, it still has one more year in its term, but the number pales in comparison to recent past sessions of Congress, which typically see 300-500 bills passed in two years (and that is even a diminished number from the 700-800 bills passed in the 1970s and 1980s).
Ten of those 70 bills this year have been renaming federal post offices or Veterans Affairs facilities, and many others are related to appropriations or extending programs like the National Flood Insurance Program or the 9/11 victim compensation fund.
This has led to House Democrats decrying McConnell’s so-called “legislative graveyard,” a moniker the Senate majority leader has proudly adopted. McConnell calls himself the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation he derides as socialist, but many of the bills that never see the Senate floor are bipartisan issues, like a universal background check bill, net neutrality, and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
“From raising the minimum wage to ensuring equal pay, we have passed legislation to raise wages. And we have passed legislation to protect and expand health coverage and bring down prescription drug prices,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a statement to Vox. “We continue to urge Senator McConnell to take up our bills, many of which are bipartisan.”
McConnell is focused on transforming the federal judiciary instead, with the Senate confirming over 150 of Trump’s nominees to the federal bench. And he has refused to bring Democratic bills to the Senate floor in part to protect vulnerable Republican senators from having to take tough votes that could divide the GOP ahead of the 2020 election.
Still, some Senate Republicans fear inaction could make them just as vulnerable.
“I’m very eager to turn from nominations to legislation,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) recently told the New York Times’s Carl Hulse. “There are important issues that are pending, and I think we could produce some terrific bills that would be signed into law.”
Since the judges, no matter how unqualified and extreme, are just passed in pro-forma votes, the Senators are literally being paid to do nothing. At least impeachment will require them to show up.
It isn't just Trump, people. The whole government has seized up under GOP rule and McConnell. along with Trump's sycophantic defenders in the House, are as responsible for it as he is. They see their only obligation at this point is to defend this miscreant in the White House.
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