Sen. Mitch McConnell has a knack for turning a bad situation into an infuriating one.

He did it after the children were murdered at Sandy Hook when he buried sensible legislation on gun safety. He did it after the Russians screwed up the 2016 election when he blocked efforts to fortify our defenses in time for 2020.

And he’s doing it now, with the virus. This time, he says hard-hit states like New Jersey should quit bugging the federal government for handouts, and instead declare bankruptcy.

“My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now, so they don’t have to do that,” he said. “That is not something I’m going to be in favor of.”

Mitch to New Jersey: Drop Dead.

No state has ever declared bankruptcy, not from hurricanes or floods or even wars. Our past practice in America has been to help one another through tough times.

But in McConnell’s pinched little world, being American doesn’t carry much weight on its own. There’s red America, and blue America. And in case anyone should miss that point, McConnell put this headline of his memo outlining this just-say-no philosophy: “Stopping Blue State Bailouts.”

So, brace yourself for more politics in the next round of federal legislation. McConnell has just picked a partisan fight. And his opening move, as usual, is outrageous.

Start with this: Kentucky gets back $2.41 for every dollar it sends to Washington, for a net gain that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo put at $148 billion. That works out to more than $30,000 per person in Kentucky, each year.

New Jersey is one of the states that pays Kentucky’s bills. We get back 90 cents for each dollar we send, and that’s better than most years.

“For McConnell to suggest that states like New Jersey, states that are generating the wealth that is keeping his state afloat, should go bankrupt because we want to keep paying our teachers, our firefighters and our cops through this crisis is beyond despicable,” says Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7th. “It’s another attempt to divide Americans against each other at a time when we need to be united.”

Cuomo captured the exasperation best: “I mean, for crying out loud, if there was ever a time for you to put aside our pettiness and your partisanship and this political lens that you see the world through … if there’s ever a time for humanity and decency, now is that time.”

Bankruptcy is a tactic that companies use when they can’t pay their bills. They typically agree to pay a portion of what their creditors are owed, and to submit to oversight until they regain their balance.

New Jersey is not going to do it, for good reason. Bank don’t like deadbeats, so we’d have trouble borrowing money in the future to build roads and schools. Plus, it’s a sleazy way to operate because you wind up shortchanging people you owe.

And besides, this shortfall is way too big for New Jersey to swallow on its own, even if we embraced the toughest spending cuts ever proposed. According to Moody’s, the virus will create a shortfall of $10 billion to $13 billion in a state budget of $40 billion.

“There’s no way to get there,” says Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, the ranking Republican on the budget committee. “It’s inevitable that the feds will come to that conclusion.”

Right now, all the players in Trenton are waiting to see what Washington does. Gov. Phil Murphy wants to tap emergency powers to borrow massive sums of money, but legislators worry about the tax hikes that would be triggered to pay it back, so nothing has been done yet.

Senate President Steve Sweeney has proposed mass furloughs, which he says would save taxpayers more than $700 million while allowing many state workers to increase their incomes with enhanced unemployment benefits. And O’Scanlon wants to use this crisis to rally support for cuts to the benefits of the public workers.

For now, Murphy’s team is frantically trying to remove restrictions placed on $1.8 billion in federal aid from earlier stimulus bills. The legislation bars spending on any items that were already budgeted before the crisis, including things like salaries for cops and nurses. “It’s a real problem,” says Chief Counsel Matt Platkin.

My guess is the feds will send a rescue package to the states, eventually. But McConnell will kick and scream, we’ll get less than we need, and the subsidies New Jersey pays to Kentucky will continue to flow through this entire crisis.

The pandemic is bad enough on its own. McConnell’s special gift is to make it infuriating.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.