‘It’s really very focused on the crisis at hand…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Although President Donald Trump and others had expressed a desire to deploy trillions in federal emergency aid by April, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., showed no intention of casting aside partisan differences during the coronavirus pandemic.
Pelosi’s #COVID19 bill is 1,119 pages and contains provisions for “conducting risk-limiting audits of results of elections” so yeah it’s really very focused on the crisis at hand.??♀️ pic.twitter.com/Q6axBi14lZ
— Rachel Bovard (@rachelbovard) March 23, 2020
On Sunday, after five Republican senators went into self-quarantine over the virus—including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who tested positive for it—the Senate bill stalled 47–47. For procedural reasons that were not immediately clear, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was recorded as voting with the Democrats to defeat it.
McConnell last week signaled he had no qualms about pushing the bill through on a party-line vote.
Instead, reports indicated an all-out legislative battle on the Senate floor as the two sides haggled over a House bill that was 1,119 pages in length covering unrelated measures such as:
- corporate diversity
- unprecedented federal bargaining rights
- $15/hr minimum wage
- airline emissions offsets
- same day voting
On Thursday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn told 200 House Democrats that the plan was to leverage the crisis as a “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” according to the National Review.
The GOP proposal, which would have extended $1,200 in monthly aid to most Americans during the pandemic quarantine—along with billions in loans for the affected industries—was shot down by Democrats who claimed that it catered too much to corporate interests, despite their own proposal pandering blatantly to left-wing lobbies such as unions and green energy.