Trump and Senate Republicans can mouth the words of support for states in shutdown but if they don’t fund the costs of that they are simply forcing states into doing their bidding. McConnel openly said the states should consider bankruptcy before taking more federal aid. That is absurd and a shirking of his Constitutional obligation to fund disaster spending at the federal level.

The states cannot create dollars and are dependent upon tax revenue to pay their bills, including unemployment benefits and much of the cost of treating uninsured victims of the virus. A month of funding such large expenditures will bankrupt even the most financially fit state, and both Trump and McConnell know it very well.

However, it isn’t the red states they are targeting, although they will be hit as well. It is the states with the most generous benefits to both its citizens and workers that will go down first without some backstop from the federal power of the purse. The red states’ meager benefits will hardly be a factor as their qualification criteria are more designed to prevent their use than actually shore up their state economies. The level of poverty that such horrible fiscal policy can produce won’t be much of a shock to most red states suffering under Republican governance.