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Root and branch, the Republican Party has taken the calm and reasoned position that it is against helping victims and institutions in this pandemic. If you needed more proof, look to Ohio, because that benighted no-longer-a-swing state is going to court to jack around with the American Rescue Plan Act on the basis of the party’s fundamentalist faith in voodoo economics. From the
The Ohio lawsuit centers on a $350 billion fund meant to help cities, counties and states cover the costs of responding to the coronavirus pandemic. The stimulus law opened the door for cash-strapped local governments to tap federal aid to pay for expenses, including for first responders, although it prohibited states from using the money to directly or indirectly offset new tax cuts… “The Tax Mandate thus gives the States a choice: they can have either the badly needed federal funds or their sovereign authority to set state tax policy. But they cannot have both. In our current economic crisis, that is no choice at all,” Ohio’s lawyers wrote in the court filing. Yost, In an interview, said the “plain meaning of the statute is unconstitutional.”