JR
Joyce Rubenstein
Capstone National Partners
Many Balls In The Air Right Now
WITHOUT AN OMNIBUS, there are two options: a long stopgap, or a short stopgap. A long one would bring you to March, which is actually the smarter play here because then it would force another deadline for Covid relief talks. A short one would be a few weeks, in order to get the omnibus locked up. That would be a fine outcome, but would leave no deadline by which to do another round of Covid relief. Not deadly, but not ideal.
— ONTO COVID RELIEF: This is where it gets a bit more complicated. All sides want a Covid relief deal, and want it to ride along government funding. This deal won’t be big — no way — but there’s a pathway to a modest deal. AND THIS … Pelosi emphasized that any Covid deal passed in a lame duck is just the start of the relief process.
_________________________________________________
All Eyes On Mitch
PPP Tax Treatment
House Votes To Legalize Marijuana
NDAA: But, But, But …
Committee Chairs Approved By The Democrats for the 117th Congress
within reach — his words — before reiterating a long list of Republican demands and blaming the Democrats for everything.”
Yikes – The Unemployment Picture
- Today’s jobs report: 245,000.
- Last month’s jobs report: 610,000.
- 400,000 people dropped out of the labor force last month.
- America has 9.8 million fewer jobs than in February.
The Cliff Ahead
1 Day Record For Virus Deaths
Just Wear A Damn Mask
Fauci Sticking Around
Biden Plan To Fight The Virus
NBC “For a second-straight day, nearly 3,000 Americans died from the coronavirus on Thursday. Also for a second-straight day, yesterday saw another 200,000 new confirmed cases. Amid that backdrop, President-elect Biden laid out his plans and priorities to combat the pandemic in his first months as president — as a vaccine starts to become available to the public.
More money for businesses and the health care system
More money to distribute the vaccine
More money to reopen schools
Convincing the public to take the vaccine
And asking every American to wear a mask for 100 days: “I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask, just 100 days to mask, not forever, 100 days.”

Demo-crazy’s Stress Test
Contrary to the dire predictions of many, the election went off without a hitch, despite circumstances being anything but typical. … turnout was sky high, counting and reporting went off fine, and there were no signs of significant foreign interference, nor major violence after the results were known. Other than the behavior of a petulant loser, the election went quite well.
For the one year of the 2016 campaign and four turbulent years as president, Donald Trump has challenged the norms of his party, government at all levels, and the entire political process. We are now almost at the end of an incredibly challenging stress test. It seems we’ve passed—if just barely. As Peter Baker and Kathleen Gray wrote on the front page of The New York Times this weekend, “in the end, the system stood firm against the most intense assault from an aggrieved president in the nation’s history because of a Republican city clerk in Michigan, a Republican secretary of state in Georgia, a Republican county supervisor in Arizona, and Republican-appointed judges in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”
DOUBLE OR NOTHING IN GEORGIA
Two big unknowns remain, relating to the two Jan. 5 special elections in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate. Given the razor-thin margin in the 2018 gubernatorial race, the quarter-point victory by Joe Biden in the state, and the fact that neither side won 50 percent in combined party vote in either race last month, a strong case can be made that it is the most evenly divided state in the country. If Republicans hold both seats or even one, they will remain in the majority. But if both seats go Democratic, the Senate goes to 50-50 with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties. The lack of ticket splitting, coupled with our current extreme partisanship, makes it very likely that this is a double-or-nothing event, with one party taking both seats.