As part of its coronavirus relief package, Congress passed the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”), a $349 billion fund to help businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Although any money business receives is denominated a loan, if the business can prove that it used the money to stay afloat and, especially, pay employees, the business can request that the loan be forgiven.

The PPP has been so popular that banks have reported to the Treasury Department that they are running out of those guaranteed funds. It’s questionable whether the fund will outlast the week.

To keep funds available, Mitch McConnell wanted to pass a single-issue bill, one that would do nothing more than infuse another $250 billion into the PPP. Democrats, however, are repeating the same behavior in which they engaged the last time Congress tried to allocate emergency funds for people hurt by the economic shutdown.

As you may recall, at the end of March, when Congress was working on its first stimulus bill, the Senate had reached a bipartisan agreement. Nancy Pelosi, however, flew into town, announced that the agreement was off, and the Democrat Senators meekly walked away. Then, in place of the negotiated agreement, Pelosi introduced a 1,200 page bill that was more focused on advancing a Democrat wish list (social justice issues, climate change, union support, etc.), than in helping Americans blindsided by an economic shutdown.

Eventually, Congress did pass a bill, but only after caving to some of the Democrats’ demands. The most notorious was the insistence that the Kennedy Center get $25 million. Democrats justified this demand by saying that the Kenedy Center employed lots of people. That narrative went out the window when, the day after Trump signed the bill, the Kennedy Center fired all its musicians.

Pelosi seems determined once again to put her agenda ahead of “the little people’s” needs. This time, she’s refusing to let the Democrats agree to Mitch McConnell’s clean bill:

Instead, Democrats want McConnell to acquiesce to jumps in funding for several entities that received billions under the CARES act, including health care systems, and to demands to reconfigure the PPP system so that minority and female entrepreneurs are given priority in lending.

That’s bad. What’s worse is that, as small business owners are forced to fire their employees and shut down their life’s work, Pelosi is boasting about blocking the PPP infusion:

Nancy Pelosi: “I congratulate the Senate Democrats” for objecting to $250 billion in small business reliefhttps://t.co/IdRmdfgYwx pic.twitter.com/KDT9tZZ8b3 — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 15, 2020

That same tone-deafness showed itself on Monday, just a day before Pelosi boasted about abandoning America’s small businesses. In an appearance on James Corden’s show, Pelosi talked about her passion for ice cream and chocolate. Standing in front of her $10,000 paired refrigerator and freezer, Nancy Pelosi admitted that she’s a chocolate fanatic who adores chocolate ice cream. It pains me to admit that, at least as to that food preference, she and I have something in common.

Twitter video screen grab

Unlike Pelosi, though, I do not have a $10,000 refrigerator/freezer. Moreover, if I were planning to leave small businesses without funds during an economic crisis, I would not proudly open a drawer in my massive freezer to reveal that it’s completely packed with ice cream that retails for $12 per pint. Watching the video, it seems that, at a quick count, Pelosi has at least $130 worth of ice cream in her freezer. As a fellow chocolate lover, I suspect that she has more layers of ice cream hiding beneath the visible ones:

With this video, Nancy Pelosi went Marie Antoinette one better. Marie Antoinette, after hearing about peasants starving for want of bread, never said “Let them eat cake.” She was just alleged to have done so to harm her reputation. Here, though, we have irrefutable evidence that Nancy Pelosi, while refusing to give America’s small businesses a financial lifeline, has effectively said, “I can still eat gourmet, $12 pint ice cream from my $10,000 freezer.”

It’s not a good look. Thankfully, this is not France in 1792, so Pelosi need not worry about keeping her head. (Although, interestingly, her own daughter said of her, “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.”) Still, it would be nice if San Franciscans would end their love affair with her and finally send this power-mad, multi-millionaire, limousine leftist packing.

Corrections: Changed Lincoln Center to Kennedy Center