Republicans and the Return of Class Warfare

“It’s not just labor demand and supply, these are tough working conditions,” Bhushan Sethi, the global people and organization co-leader at PwC Consulting Agency, told NBC News.

“I can’t underscore enough the real concern of individuals,” he continued. “Am I safe? Will I be forced to trade personal safety around the virus and variants for a job?”

Finally, it’s also true that some people are using this time to consider their options and contemplate job changes.

But here’s irony rearing its ugly head again: Republicans in the states and on Capitol Hill are opposing or refusing those things that would actually encourage people to return to work.

Namely, a livable wage, paid child care, and incentives in the American Rescue Plan for holdout states to finally expand Medicaid.

And here’s where the GOP further tips its hand: A lot of what Biden wants to do is paid for by taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations. While Republicans may want Coca-Cola to keep its trap shut about odious efforts to restrict voting in Georgia, they still know on which side their fundraising bread is buttered.

Which is why you saw Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sprain his tongue last month as he walked back his call for corporations to stay out of politics. Corporate donations, after all, slowed to a trickle after large companies cut off GOP lawmakers who opposed certifying the election results.

And as much as the exiled former Dear Leader held himself out as a champion of the forgotten man, he spent much of his four years disassembling the regulatory state to make the turf friendlier to big business. And let’s not leave out the deficit-exploding tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest Americans to the detriment of working Americans.

So while the GOP’s recent rhetoric about lazy and ambition-free workers (and which workers are they referring to, by the way? Surely not the base?) is disappointing, it’s not particularly surprising.

The grift has been in plain sight the whole time.

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An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek. Copyright 2021 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.