Schram: Biden steps up for Trump voters

• $1,400 plus another $1,400 for each dependent they claim on their taxes;

• $300 in increased unemployment benefits payments that will be extended until Labor Day;

• Child tax credits increased to $3,600 for those under age 6, and $3,000 for those ages 6 to 17.

The massive bill includes funding for pandemic-related urgent needs in vaccinations, testing and tracing, plus substantial aid programs for rent and mortgage payments, day care, schools, small-business loans, restaurants and local transit systems.

But I’m guessing that what you really find painful is the realization that all members of your Republican Party in Congress were so willing to turn their backs on your urgent needs in a time of desperation. It didn’t even make political sense. Pollsters say a whopping 60 percent of Republicans favored the huge rescue plan.

This was not breaking news. In Florida, while Trump won the election with 51 percent of the vote in November, those same voters approved an increase of the state’s minimum wage to $15 with 60.8 percent of the vote.

In this era when cable news channels rely more on talking heads telling us what they think about and how they feel, CNN provided an informative insight by returning to the days of shoe-leather journalism. CNN’s excellent correspondent Gary Tuchman went into the heart of West Virginia’s coal mining country and found overwhelming support for Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act in Mingo County, which voted 85 percent for Trump in 2020.

In the county seat, Williamson, coal miner Kevin Johnson, a Republican Trump voter who lost his job in the pandemic year, welcomed the rescue bill and said he would use the money to “pay off the rent and pay some bills because we’re behind, you know?”

After others sounded the same refrain, Tuchman asked Sherran Ray Justice how he felt about the fact that no Republican in Congress voted for this rescue measure. “Yeah, that’s some bull – hogwash bull,” Justice said, disapproving of the Republicans’ rigid inflexibility back in Washington. “They should loosen up a bit, y’know what I mean?”

Meanwhile, back in the nation’s capital, at least one conservative Republican was eager to show some flexibility – in a way that is far from admirable. Shortly after voting against Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., rushed to take credit for the bill’s provision that will significantly aid restaurants back home.

Wicker tweeted: “Independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief. This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll.”

Down home in Wicker’s Tupelo, worshippers at the First Baptist Church, where the senator is a deacon, may well admire his demonstration of political flexibility as a feat of fine Ole Miss chutzpah.