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Representative James Clyburn, the Democrat from South Carolina, wasn’t kidding when he said the Chinese Virus relief bill that Congress is debating was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
He and his fellow Democrats have packed the House version of the relief bill with money for special interests that has nothing to do with helping average Americans through the pandemic, or fighting the pathogenic scourge that has closed schools and stopped sporting events, and is wrecking the economy and confining Americans to their homes.
The Democrats won’t, as Obama veteran Rahm Emanuel said, let a crisis go to waste.
What’s in It
The “Take Responsibility for Families and Workers Act” is, as a columnist for USA Today wrote, a long wish list for a “liberal Christmas in March.”
Breitbart highlighted some of the goodes the radical Left can expect, courtesy of the American taxpayer:
• Increased fuel emission standards for the airlines will “require each air carrier receiving assistance” to “make and achieve a binding commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the domestic flights of such air carrier in every calendar year, beginning with 2021, on a path consistent with a 25 percent reduction in the aviation sector’s emissions from 2005 levels by 2035, and a 50 percent reduction in the sector’s emissions from 2005 levels by 2050.”
• American families will get a small check, but imprudent students who unwisely saddled themselves with massive college debt get up to $10,000 no later than nine months after the emergency is over.
• Even better, Pelosi and her leftist gang will make vote fraud easier. In addition to permitting early voting and on-line and same-day registration, they’ll mandate voting by mail and even “ballot harvesting.”
The State — (A) shall permit a voter to designate any person to return a voted and sealed absentee ballot to the post office, a ballot drop-off location, tribally designated building, or election office so long as the person designated to return the ballot does not receive any form of compensation based on the number of ballots that the person has returned and no individual, group, or organization provides compensation on this basis; and (B) may not put any limit on how many voted and sealed absentee ballots any designated person can return to the post office, a ballot drop off location, tribally designated building, or election office.
• The Democrats want to send $20 million to the Postal Service Pension fund, and, Breitbart noted, fortify leftist social engineering by requiring businesses and corporations to “report racial and gender data regarding salaries, number of employees, supplier diversity, and membership on corporate boards. It also requires federal agencies to use businesses and financial institutions owned by minorities or women.”
Democrats have not explained, at least to the satifaction of any thinking person, how fiddling with airline emissions, same-day voter registration, permitting Democrat political torpedoes to deliver ballots, or forcing the federal government to use minority- and women-owned financial companies will help alleviate the baleful effects of the Chinese Virus.
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Beaucoodles of Money
In keeping with their push for immigration anarchy, the Democrats would extend nonimmigrant visas and block colleges from providing “any information to the [Census] Bureau on the immigration or citizenship status of any individual.”
Also included, a GOP fact sheet says, is $1 billion for Obamaphones and $35 million for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, along with “expansive new tax credits for solar and wind energy” and help for “retirement plans for community newspaper employees.”
The bill also includes goodies for Big Labor, a key Democrat special interest, by mandating “increased collective bargaining.”
The GOP also provided a list of provisions in the earlier bill that Democrats blocked, including direct payments to Americans of $1,200 per person, $2,400 per couple, and $500 per child, $350 billion to small businesses, $250 billion in unemployment money, $100 billion for hospitals, and so on and so forth.
The GOP did not divulge the source of all that money.
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
