Yesterday, Congress announced a deal had been reached on a new COVID relief bill, at least insofar as getting it to the floor for a vote. In reality, almost no one has actually read it. This all happened after months of stonewalling by Democrats as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer sought to ensure maximum political damage occurred to President Trump. They played a cynical game with people’s lives and the media praised them for it.
Well, now we are getting details about this newest “compromise.” You’ll be less than shocked to learn that the bill is mostly trash, full of unrelated spending, and short on help for average Americans. In fact, only 1/5th of the bill goes to sending relief checks directly to the people.
Say 100 million Americans are eligible for the check. That's $60 billion in total direct payments. Bill is reportedly around $900 billion. So less than 7% of it is going directly to Americans. Congress is completely useless, & it would be better if they never showed up for work.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) December 21, 2020
Oh, but there’s $82 billion in there for schools and colleges, many of which aren’t even holding full-time, in person learning right now. What exactly do they need more money for? Who knew doing Zoom classes was so much more expensive than actually having your staff provide a real education. Besides, many of the colleges that will receive money are sitting on billions in endowments. How about they dip into that before fleecing taxpayers again?
That’s far from the only face-palm worthy inclusion, though.
— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) December 21, 2020
Because nothing says solving a pandemic like a bunch of money for low income broadband. Now, I understand the argument will be that this is for remote learning. That’s nonsense. This money won’t even be spent by the time most of the country is vaccinated. It takes time to build infrastructure as well. Further, remote learning has been shown to be completely ineffective. Why spend money to do something that doesn’t work. Here’s a better idea. Don’t spend any extra money and just open schools. Anyone against that idea at this point is just spitting in the face of science.
And while I understand the money to rip out China-owned Huawei’s equipment is a good thing, why did it need to be in this bill? Why did funding for the border wall ($1.4 billion) need to be in this bill? Everyone realizes that Joe Biden is just going to re-direct that money, right? It’s basically just writing Democrats a blank check to further screw up our immigration system.
It doesn’t end there though. Overall, the bill is a complete win for Democrats while Republicans grab a few scraps off the floor. Look at this laundry list of Nancy Pelosi’s desires being met.
Hundreds of pages of cap-busting spending, throwing billions at airlines and billions at schools that are locked down, paying people more to not work than to work, handouts to big corporations, “green” renewable stuff, post office bailout, pork, & too much other garbage to name. https://t.co/xvKxqc20St
— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) December 21, 2020
But you get your one time $600 check. Aren’t you happy? Why, it’s almost as if the government doesn’t care about anything but a myriad of special interests like teachers unions and big business.
When the government destroys your business then gives you $600 nine months later… pic.twitter.com/OLBh1wCoEu
— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️🌈 (@brad_polumbo) December 21, 2020
Regardless, we didn’t need all this spending in the first place. What we needed was for our government to not be full of cowards. Lockdowns have been shown to be pointless delay tactics at best. You could fix most of our economic issues by following the lead of states like Florida, which are open but are seeing less of a spike than New York. Checks and more unemployment aren’t the answer. But spending money has already been easier that doing the right thing in Washington.
(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)
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