Bravo! The bill is a 5000 plus page pork laden monstrosity. I think direct cash payments are bad policy, but better that this money conjured up out of thin air go to ordinary taxpayers than to the special interests that clearly will reap most of the benefit. The 2024 campaign starts tonight. Well played Mr. President, well played.
Here is the text of the President’s remarks:
Throughout the summer, Democrats cruelly blocked COVID relief legislation in an effort to advance their extreme left wing agenda and influence the election. Then a few months ago, Congress started negotiations on a new package to get urgently needed help to the American people. It’s taken forever. However, the bill they are now planning to send back to my desk is much different than anticipated. It really is a disgrace.
For example, among the more than 5,000 pages in this bill, which nobody in Congress has read because of its length and complexity, it’s called the COVID Relief Bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID. This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia, $134 million to Burma, $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment. $25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan, $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. $40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, which is not even open for business. $1 billion for the Smithsonian and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art. Likewise, these facilities are essentially not open.
$7 million for reef fish management, $25 billion to combat Asian carp, $2.5 million to count the number of amberjack fish in the Gulf of Mexico. A provision to promote the breeding of fish in federal hatcheries, $3 million in poultry production technology, $2 million to research the impact of down trees, $566 million for construction projects at the FBI.
The bill also allows stimulus checks for the family members of illegal aliens, allowing them to get up to $1,800 each. This is far more than the Americans are given. Despite all of this wasteful spending and much more, the $900 billion package provides hardworking taxpayers with only $600 each in relief payments and not enough money is given to small businesses. And in particular, restaurants, whose owners have suffered so grievously. They were only given a deduction for others to use in business, their restaurant, for two years. This two year period must be withdrawn, which will allow the owners to obtain financing and get their restaurants back in condition. Congress can terminate it at a much later date, but two years is not acceptable. It’s not enough.
Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it. It wasn’t their fault, it was China’s fault. Not their fault. I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple. I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package, and maybe that administration will be me, and we will get it done. Thank you very much.
This is good news.
AOC complained about receiving the bill 2 hours prior to the vote and compared it to “hostage-taking”. She then proceeded to vote yes on the bill.
Bravo Trump. There should be no Covid money for any one other than small business and the poor folks who have suffered from the insane steps taken to fight this minimally life threatening disease.
I wish I could shake our President’s hand and thank him. I can see why so many DC politicians and bureaucrats are eager to see him gone— so they can get back to their self-serving business-as-usual.
It is a tragedy for our nation, for so many reasons, that re-election appears to have been stolen from Trump.
Refusing to sign isn’t the same as a veto threat.
Still, I hope he vetoes it. That will shed yet more light on who’s part of the swamp. Objectively as Orwell might say.
God Bless President Trump! This nation has truly been blessed to have such a leader in a time of need.
Refusing to sign isn’t the same as a veto threat.
Yes, it is better since it doesn’t start the clock running for an override. Trump has ten days to review any piece of legislation without vetoing it. If Congress adjourns during the ten days it is dead.
Are the Senate Republicans acting like people who expect to be in the majority in the next Congress?
Yep. Especially since we have this:
Relief for small business and those on the poverty line – definitely.
However, if a government is going to hand out cash payments to just about anybody, you are bound to get mass exploitation of the scheme.
In April, Australia implemented two Covid relief payments – Job Seekers and Job Keepers. They were both helpful for a while especially during the middle of the year when things were dire.
But when the scheme was renewed later in the year, you had many big businesses exploiting the Job Keepers Scheme by forcing their staff to take pay cuts or go onto Job Keepers (which was far lower than their Salary) in order to maintain their bottom line – so essentially relying on the government to pay staff and pretend things were normal. Many big businesses couldn’t fathom a reduction in their revenue even though the majority of small business were doing it tough and had no choice.
On the contrary, with Job Seekers- the amount was so enticing that people wouldn’t go out and look for work, AND there were people on the Job Seekers Scheme asking potential employers for cash wages so they could continue to receive their Job Seekers allowance. There are a decent number of Small businesses, to this day, struggling to fill positions because of this. Nobody wants to work. The government will pay me for sitting at home. Go figure.
Considering the silly International Relief amounts written into this 5,000 page Bill, the Einstein’s who wrote it haven’t given a single thought to what they are proposing.
This is one reason why we cannot surrender to the China Joe election steal.
Twain, “Suppose you were an idiot. And, suppose you were a congressman. But, I repeat myself.”
Since then, what diod we the people do? We allowed ourselves to be gulled into giving the idiots more and more power to wreck everything.
The past four years were a halfway break from the Idiocracy. God Help Us – it’s coming back – good and hard.
It’s not a stimulus bill. It’s a CCP virus lockdown lifeboat bill.
Little Billy asks, “Daddy, why does Congress have a 8% approval rating?”
Do you people have a problem with Congress making a $700,000,000 donation in your name to Sudan????
Remember when Mitch McConnell on taking the helm as Majority Leader said there would be a return to ‘regular order’? Waal, we now know that ‘regular order’ means phone book sized compendia of bon bons for constituencies. I have a dear friend who has been employed for 18 years as a congressional aide. His job responsibilities in his office and the position his boss occupies in the caucus have been such that he’s been in some sort of gatekeeper position in re this legislation. He said he himself was stunned at for what other members have been jonesing. He said he’d had one conversation after another where he found himself saying “Really? You’re arguing for that?”. He’s a very decent human being in his mundane life; he’s also had 18 years worth of exposure to congressional logrolling, so his conception of what’s roughly to be expected isn’t yours. They just get grosser every year. (For reasons I cannot explain without identifying him, he’s not an intense political partisan. He did make clear that the grossness has been largely unidirectional, coming from the Democratic side of the aisle).
We live in insane times, which is why the Georgia Senate races are at all competitive. Democratic voters don’t care that their candidates are gross pigs. And Brad Raffersberger will let the Democrats in Fulton County stuff the ballot boxes.
Mitch McConnell has exposed himself as a principle Saboteur of the Trump Presidency.
A Trump goal as the President, or Opposition Candidate, should be to make a McConnell endorsement political suicide. This Covid Stimulus Bill may be a major opportunity for Trump to shape the 2022 Republican Primary to favor Conservative candidates.