On Tuesday, Donald Trump demanded Congress rework a massive 5,593-page bill allegedly designed for so-called “COVID relief.” The measure, which passed both the House and the Senate, includes a hefty helping of pork (the indigestible kind) and other non-COVID related items, including a section that outlines the reincarnation and succession of the Dalai Lama, Newsweek and others reported.
Reporting the obvious, Newsweek stated:
The massive legislation was released publicly Monday after months of back-and-forth negotiations between Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who announced Sunday that they had reached an agreement to provide further economic relief to Americans amid the surging coronavirus pandemic. The stimulus bill has been included with the appropriations bill that will keep the government funded moving forward. Due to the length of the legislation and the tight timeframe lawmakers are facing, most members of Congress will not likely have time to read the entire bill.
…
Section 342 of the bill outlines a “statement of policy regarding the succession or reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.” Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, currently resides in exile in India after escaping from Tibet in 1959 amid a revolt against Chinese governance. Tibet was occupied by China in 1951 and incorporated as part of the East Asian nation.
Of course, this proposal — like the countless foreign aid packages earmarked for friendly (and some not-so-friendly) nations — has absolutely nothing to do with COVID. Nor does it provide any relief whatsoever to Americans whose lives and businesses have been decimated by government mismanagement and in the cases of several Democrat-led cities and states, outright tyranny.
Trump, Breitbart reported, has not said he would veto the measure but is demanding that Congress rework it and increase the amount of relief from $600 to $2000.
“I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000, or $4000 for a couple,” he said. He also criticized it for giving $1800 to family members of illegal aliens. “This is far more than the Americans are given.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2020
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in response that she’s open to bringing it up again. But will she agree to strip the nonsense out of the bill? Somehow, we don’t think so.
In an op-ed critical of the measure, The Hill’s Joe Concha said:
The $900 billion stimulus package COVID-19 “relief” bill is exactly what one would expect from a dysfunctional, tone-deaf Congress: a pork-filled cluster filled with anything and everything that has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic or relief.
…
It harkens back to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) once explaining that a bill needed to be passed in order to find out what was in it. In a related story, our government is broken.
The topline from the bill says a mere $600 per adult and $600 per child goes to those eligible, which is half of what adults received in another relief package passed earlier this year (the per-child payment was $500). Not hard to see that this amount is hardly enough to keep those struggling from staying out of poverty.
Concha’s right with his analysis. Yhe measure would have to improve 100% to suck.
Related:
