An economic crisis in Kentucky has workers, businesses furious with McConnell
Source: Washington Post
An economic crisis in Kentucky has workers, businesses furious with McConnell
Joblessness is high, benefits are running out and local leaders say they need the kind of aid that the Senate’s most powerful figure has yet to endorse
By Tony Romm
8/11/2020, 6:15:04 a.m.
The parade of cars honked incessantly as they crawled past the federal courthouse on West Broadway, their message clear to anyone who bothered to steal a glance at their signs outside.
“Mitch better have my money.”
The Kentucky representatives from the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and other labor groups had grown incensed with Mitch McConnell, their home state senator and the chamber’s most powerful lawmaker. For months, they said, he had been blocking much-needed congressional coronavirus aid, the kind of dollars that might help workers and businesses in the Bluegrass State struggling to survive financially.
So they hit the streets on Thursday, drove down to McConnell’s Louisville office and started to circle the block, their 30 or so vehicles plastered with not-so-subtle orange and gray signs featuring a family-friendly rewrite of a popular Rihanna tune.
The labor protest marked only the latest in a series of exasperated complaints from Kentuckians directed at McConnell (R), as some locals find themselves frustrated by the absence of their powerful political representative on Capitol Hill. In more than two dozen interviews, out-of-work residents, struggling restaurant owners and other business leaders, as well as a cadre of annoyed food, housing and labor rights groups, all said they are in dire need of more support from Congress — the likes of which McConnell has not been able to provide.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/11/mcconnell-kentucky-coronavirus-aid/
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