Democrats Are Shamelessly Filling the Coronavirus Relief Bill with Unrelated Pork and Policies
March 24, 2020 11:33am
I just spent the last five hours reading the Democrats' bill to address problems arising from the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Democrats are shamelessly trying to use the coronavirus relief bill as a pork barrel spending spree and to include several unrelated policy issues.
It was President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." The Democrats are certainly using the coronavirus crisis to try to do things they could not not do before.
Below, I have compiled the pork & policies, along with the page numbers on which they appear.
ELECTIONS:
Mandatory vote-by-mail ballots during a declared emergency (p. 826)
Prohibits voter ID requirements nationwide (p. 821)
Federal regulation of the placement of all polling locations (p. 820)
Renders illegal all state laws that require witness signatures on mailed in ballots (p. 821)
Mandates nationwide early voting (p. 818)
Renders illegal all state laws that prohibit ballot harvesting (p. 830)
STUDENT DEBT:
Student loan payments will be made by taxpayers rather than by the borrowers (p. 613)
CLIMATE CHANGE:
$100 million for development of sustainable aviation fuels (p. 979)
$33 million National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (p. 15)
$3 million for Forest and Rangeland Research (p. 70)
Various carbon emission restrictions for airlines (pp. 968-982)
TSA WASTE:
$26 million for overtime and travel costs for TSA agents (p. 54) Who's flying???
$20 million for the TSA to buy more explosive trace detection swabs (p. 54)
MISCELLANEOUS PORK:
$300 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (p. 126)
$35 million grant to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (p. 76)
$300 million for the National Endowment of the Arts (p. 77)
$300 million for the National Endowment of the Humanities (p. 77)
$300 million in FOREIGN AID via "International Disaster Assistance" (p. 148)
$3 BILLION for FOREIGN AID via the International Development Association (p. 155)
$7.2 BILLION for the African Development Bank (p. 157)
$90 million for the Peace Corps (p. 148)
$1.4 BILLION for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program (p. 95)
$6 BILLION for child care (p. 95)
$250 million for Native American Housing Block Grants (p. 183)
$130 million for "Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS" (p. 186)
$5 BILLION for "Homeless Assistance Grants" (p. 194)
$55 million for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (p. 638)
$200 million for staffing the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (p. 640)
$3 BILLION for the Minority Businesses Initiative (p. 663)
$13 million specifically earmarked to Howard University (p. 122)
$7 million specifically earmarked to Gallaudet University (p. 118) [It should be noted that the proposed bill already had $9.5 billion for "higher education" (p. 120). Why were these two universities allocated their own appropriations? An alumni in Congress, perhaps?]
In addition to the unrelated pork, the Democrats' bill also imposes many restrictions upon corporations receiving federal coronavirus aid. Some, like temporarily prohibiting stock buybacks and dividend payments, make sense. But it imposes terrible mandates also:
A $15/hour minimum wage beginning January 1st next year (p. 741).
Paid leave of at least 14 days for all full-time & part-time employees AND for contractors (p. 740)
A ban on lobbying, which is a blatant violation of First Amendment Rights to petition the government for a redress of grievances (p. 728)
A limit on CEO pay (p. 741).
Various expanded collective bargaining powers for unions (pp. 945-953)
And that's just what I found during my five hour perusal of the bill. There's probably a lot more pork and bad policies in the 1404 page bill than what I've listed here.
If Democrats had any decency, and if the media wasn't so willing to deceive the public on behalf of the Democratic Party, the Democrats would support a clean bill that addresses the actual coronavirus problem at hand. The fact that they won't, shows where their priorities are. And they're not with the American people.
The partisanship and dishonesty of the Democrats and the media - but I repeat myself - are disgraceful.
It should be noted that the Democrats know that such pork barrel funding would be illegal under existing law, so they made it legal by declaring in the bill itself that their pork is "an emergency requirement pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985."
Please don't take my word for any of this. Read the Democrats' bill yourself at https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=6817883-FINAL-HOUSE-BILL
The so-called "news" media is not reporting this! If you are as outraged by this as I am, please share this link: www.TheMikeBatesShow.com/blog/200324-1133
Thank you,
Mike Bates
mike@TheMikeBatesShow.com