"My red line going forward on this bill is we need to provide protection, litigation protection, for those who have been on the front lines. […] We can't pass another bill unless we have liability protection," McConnell told Fox News Tuesday, saying it was a "condition" for the next bill having aid for states and local governments. "You have to carefully craft the liability protection to deal with the money that would be supplied to state and local governments conditioned upon them enacting at the state level the kind of legislation that would provide liability protection for those that are seeking to go forward and get the economy back to work," McConnell said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi batted his bluster away. "I don't think at this time, with the coronavirus, that there's any interest in having any less protection with our workers," Pelosi said Tuesday on MSNBC. "We don't need any prescription from anybody about mythology or just excuses not to do the job. It's really sad—it's disgraceful, because there is such tremendous need." Majority Leader Steny Hoyer added that Democrats "do not want to make such action contingent upon any actions that we take on behalf of employees and employers and the public."

"Is he saying if an owner tells a worker they have to work next to somebody who might have coronavirus, without a mask or PPE, that that owner wouldn't be liable? That make no sense," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer asked, rhetorically, because that's exactly what McConnell is proposing. He said McConnell trying to tie this to state and local aid is "subterfuge" and "wrong," and that McConnell has to "stop putting barriers in the way" of more money for local governments.

There's even some pushback to this idea in the business community, which wants to make sure they're not painted as backing McConnell's free-for-all. Kent Swig, president of Swig Equities, LLC, a privately owned real estate investment and development company, said: "If there is no liability on the part of employers without a set of rules by which employers have to abide by, then that means you can have a wild wild West. […] You have to have a balance and you have to have rules and regulations." The general counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), by no means an even politically moderate trade group, says they are "not trying to protect bad actors, and we are also not saying that liability should be completely eliminated." NAM, Linda Kelly says, believes "there should be a higher standard in place in order to impose legal liability and that employers who are doing the best that they can with the knowledge they have should not be subject to legal liability."

Democrats have been talking about $500 billion in aid to state and local governments to make up for revenue lost in the crisis. That's money that pays utility and transit workers, cops and firefighters, teachers and all public service employees. McConnell is holding all that hostage (because hostage-taking is his thing) to allow business owners to endanger their workers and the public at large with no fear of repercussions. That's so far out of the mainstream that Democrats should be laughing in his face.