OPINION:
The latest in the House Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus bill — you know, the one they just passed that was aimed at helping suffering Americans cope with coronavirus lockdowns and shut-ins — is a parliamentarian-pressed drop of the entirely unrelated $15 minimum wage tack-on. Call it the bone thrown to Republicans.
But that still leaves a bazillion or two other costly and unrelated tack-ons.
The name of the bill is H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. But scroll the text, tabulate the figures, and it’s plain to see the measure is far less for the people, for the good of the people, for the rescue of the coronavirus-beaten people and far, far more for the political socialist ambitions of the Democrats.
Democrats just can’t help themselves when it comes to using people — using suffering people, particularly — to achieve partisan wins. They do it with children and school closings. They do it with Blacks and abortion. They do it with the mentally ill and transgenderism and sex-reassignment surgery.
They do it with the coronavirus and — anything and everything they can toss into a stimulus bill.
You want your $1,400 check, America? Well then, get the Republicans on board with $50 million in “grants, contracts and other agency activities that implement the environmental justice purposes and objectives” from the executive order signed by Bill Clinton called, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.”
You want that federal dole-out to pay this month’s mortgage or rent, America? Well then, shut up about the $50 million for “family planning” that will — shhhhh — most likely end up in Planned Parenthood’s coffers to be used in the furtherance of abortion counseling and even abortion procedures.
You want that emergency check that’ll keep some food on the table for your kids for the next month or so, America? Well then, call your representatives in the House, contact your senators in the Senate, make sure they know you’re A-OK with the $500 million that will go to libraries, to museums, to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, to programs to “ensure the survival and continuing vitality of Native American languages during and after the public [COVID-19] health emergency,” and to the like.
That $47.5 billion in Sec. 1003 appropriated for “necessary administrative expenses” to carry out provisions of the bill that are earmarked for funding? Don’t worry about it.
That $46 billion in Sec. 3011 to implement a “national” “testing, contact tracing, surveillance and mitigation” system on the “federal, state, local and territorial” levels; along with the $7.6 billion in Sec. 3031 to distribute the vaccine and perform contact tracing; along with the $1.8 billion in Sec. 3035 to test, vaccinate and contact trace specifically in prisons, jails, detention centers, long-term care facilities and other residential and medical care facilities; along with the $1.5 billion in Sec. 3041 for contact tracing for “Indian Health” — and more. Why not just a single contact tracing sum? Don’t worry about it.
Even the monies set for direct citizen relief aren’t monies well spent. They’re more monies meant to make the American public more dependent on government, not less — and in a free market, that’s contradictory to the long-term success of the national economy.
This bill is nothing but a boondoggle.
If Democrats were truly interested in helping America out of this COVID-19 mess, they’d fight for a return to self-sufficiency. They’d fight to reopen the country, restart the economy, return to pre-coronavirus normalcy — and not dig the debt hole deeper.
They’d fight for a rebound based on capitalism, rather than sinking the country deeper into resource redistribution and socialism.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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