Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell suggested that instead of providing aid to the states to help them meet their Medicaid and education obligations, the federal government offer them loans.
This idea was tried once before, in the depths of the Depression. In 1932, Congress appropriated $300 million to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to send to the states for unemployment relief. (Unemployment insurance did not exist until the Social Security Act of 1935 was passed).
Unfortunately, Republican President Herbert Hoover's RFC didn't offer the funds to the states as grants but as loans. Already struggling with budgets, many states didn't take the offer. And the economy continued its plunge into the abyss.
This is the Republican idea of a policy worth reviving.
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