March 5, 2021

Before the American Rescue Plan Act came to the Senate floor, Ron Johnson (Q - 13th Hole at Mar-A-Lardo) boasted how he had this big elaborate scheme to delay the bill's inevitable passage by days or weeks:

The Oshkosh Republican on Wednesday afternoon promised to force a full reading of the bill while speaking on The Vicki McKenna Show. He said that reading the entirety of the document would likely take up to 10 hours.

"I will make them read their 600- to 700-page bill," he said on the radio program. "So that every member of the Senate would have time to read it ... before we start the debate on it."

After the reading, Johnson said he is prepared to continue to use parliamentary procedure to slow down a full vote by introducing as many amendments as he can. He hopes the price tag of the bill will go down substantially by the end of the debate by eliminating portions of the bill he sees as unfit.

On Thursday, before RoJo followed through with his threat, forcing Senate clerks to spend hours and hours reading aloud every word of the bill., he wasted more time by trying to shock and awe his colleagues by trying to explain how much money $1.9 trillion is, getting desperate in his attempt to do so.

rojo_chart_on_1.9_trillion

Either RoJo must have a very poor memory or he has a very high tolerance level for hypocrisy. Because it was just a few years ago that RoJo was salivating at the chance to vote for the GOP Tax Scam, which came with a price tag of - wait for it! - $1.9 trillion. Obviously, RoJo believes that millionaires and wealthy CEOs, including himself, deserve nearly two trillion dollars, but the working stiffs don't deserve squat. Let them eat cake, eh, RoJo?

Rachel Maddow showed the above video of Sen. Chris Murphy pointing out this and other hypocrisies from the Republicans.

But for all of RoJo's plotting, scheming and hypocrisy, RoJo blew it and opened the door for the Democrats, especially Sen. Chris Von Hollen, to outsmart and out maneuver him:

And read they were, for 10 hours and 45 minutes, to the mostly empty Senate chamber. Johnson, most likely, was resting comfortably in his Washington, D.C. residence. But while he was snoozing, Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, was wide awake and thwarted Johnson’s plot. When the reading completed in the middle of the night, Van Hollen rose to request that the debate on the bill resume at 9:00 a.m. and that it be limited to just three hours, rather than the originally planned 20 hours.

No Republicans were in the the chamber to object and it was so ordered. As a result Johnson’s evil plan to drag out passage of the legislation spectacularly blew up in his face.

Good job, RoJo!

Not only has he earned the disdain of the Democrats and the millions of Americans who want this bill to pass as soon as possible, but now he has earned the scorn of his fellow Republicans for making such a boneheaded error, accomplishing absolutely nothing but causing a few Senate interns sore throats and being a general pain in the arse,

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