Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi want you to think they’re heroes. Really, they should be ashamed

It's the most frustrating time of the year in Washington.

No, not the annual brawl through crowded shops as the capital city’s residents and dignitaries scurry about on their lunch breaks to finish their holiday shopping.

This is the time of year — since around 2009 — that Congress and whomever is lucky (unlucky?) enough to occupy the White House decide to finally address a list of issues and crises.

It almost always involves government spending for the rest of the fiscal year. A holiday shutdown threat is now as common here as the District’s government ripping up Connecticut Avenue NW in Cleveland Park. (Local reference, sure, but just trust your correspondent.)

Congressional leaders and Donald Trump’s designated negotiators on a Covid relief and government spending package that (after all the remaining contentious issues are ironed out) will total well over $2 trillion are now entering the hurry-up-and-wait phase of this annual December dance.

It’s more drunken square dance than elegant waltz.

There were no fancy holiday parties in Washington this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But had there been one on Capitol Hill with all four congressional leaders and Trump as the guests of honor, the theme could well have been: “Why Do In June What We Can Put Off Until December?”

Because that’s exactly what all parties involved did on the annual dozen federal spending bills and another coronavirus economic relief bill.

The emerging package on Covid will, when all the numbers are added up, likely end up around $910 billion. 

No matter what Democratic leaders say publicly, their rank-and-file members will tell you it was foolish to hold out for six months for a $2 trillion package that Republicans were never going to bring to the Senate floor, much less pass. 

And no matter how loudly Republicans spend the next few weeks declaring victory over the size of this measure, their demand of an even smaller package – or none at all – was equally unreasonable.

Both held out for half a year as American families and businesses struggled to put food on the table and pay their rent or mortgages over their biggest demands: tens of billions to help cash-depleted state and local governments (Democrats) and new liability protections for businesses and other entities to guard them from Covid-related lawsuits (Republicans).

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell breathed life into the talks when he proposed throwing out both a few weeks ago. He could have spoken up months before, but opted, like all others involved, to allow families and business owners to limp along, hit up food banks or, in the case of many small companies, close their doors forever.

When McConnell floated the idea of discarding those two big sticking-points, Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired off a press release calling the idea “absurd.”

A few weeks later, she is about to sign off on and urge her members to vote for a bill that does just that. Absurd about covers it.  

So where, one might ask, is Donald?

The president is nowhere to be found in these talks that are ostensibly about helping people, including the 70 million-plus he would need in 2024 to win another term, should he decide to run again. 

Instead, he is holed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, spending his final days there hate-watching cable news, working the phones, and tweeting about his baseless claims of a “rigged” election and voter fraud for which his legal team has been unable to provide any federal judge a shred of evidence.

Any commander-in-chief has the loudest bullhorn in town, you’d think, especially one who — even though he was defeated by President-elect Joe Biden — just got 74.2 million votes. Not this one.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and it’s certainly bipartisan. No one should emerge from the talks taking much credit – yet it’s clear that’s just what both sides want as they boast about late nights, long hours, and “racing” to meet deadlines that existed months ago. 

No wonder Washington is as toxic everywhere else in the United States right now. It’s a well-earned reputation.

Will there soon be a deal? The answer seems to be yes, but can frustratingly seem to change by the second.

McConnell used part of his session-opening floor speech on Thursday to say passing the government-funding portion of the emerging deal is on the “one-yard line.” But just a few minutes later, he had ominous words about the Covid half.

“But I will say this … in my judgement, we are very close to a point that arises in every major negotiation. It’s the point where each side faces a fork in the road,” he said. “Do we want to lapse into politics as usual and let negotiations lose steam? Do we want to haggle and spar like this was an ordinary political exercise, get wrapped around the actual language or policy riders that we know are controversial?”

Why wouldn’t you, Mr Majority Leader? You’ve made tens of millions of struggling families and business owners – and their employees – wait this long. Why not a few more days? Why not a week? 

After all, blowing up the talks over this ideological principal or that one, in this poisonous partisan environment, almost feels like a wise career move and a savvy political tactic. Such a maneuver would raise millions in campaign cash and show a member was really sticking it to those radicals in the other party.

This deal, based on weeks of work by a group of moderates, would still be closeable after, say, a weekend of bickering and finger-pointing. 

That’s largely because the impetus to finally get something done seems mostly about the negotiators saving their own political rear ends, rather than the scores of small business owners wondering if tiny Covid-19 particles suffocated their dreams.