‘Many provisions in this bill that are antithetical to everything I believe in, but we’re facing a crisis and this is the only option to get immediate help…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., bit the bullet and voted for a bloated, pork-filled rescue package late Wednesday to ease the pain of the coronavirus pandemic, but not before blasting its many flaws.
“Many provisions in this bill that are antithetical to everything I believe in, but we’re facing a crisis and this is the only option to get immediate help to small businesses and unemployed workers,” the freshman GOP senator said in a statement Thursday.
“We know that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi tried to stuff this bill with their liberal pet-projects that have nothing to do with this crisis, proving once again that Democrats should never be in charge of anything,” Scott added.
Many of the worst Democratic leadership proposals were beaten back by Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump, though plenty remain. Scott also said he has “significant reservations” about the structure of the stimulus package that ultimately passed the Senate 96-0.
Scott took issue with sending taxpayer-funded checks to people who still have jobs and are receiving employer paychecks. He also said that people who don’t need the government support might save it, which doesn’t help the economy. And if good Samaritans try to help struggling local businesses, it may be too late.
“Many of the places they might be tempted to help stimulate are businesses that the government has shut down,” he said.
Then, there’s the cost.
“The price tag on this bill is staggering,” said Scott. “We should not fool ourselves into thinking this is something we can afford.”
The $2-trillion stimulus is equivalent to half of annual federal spending and amounts to $6,000 in new debt for every man, woman and child in the country.
Scott asserted that Congress must begin cutting federal spending after the coronavirus pandemic subsides by at least the $2 trillion lawmakers are trying to spend this week, although the House still needed to approve the Senate bill on Friday.
The Senate had reached a bipartisan agreement on a $1.2 trillion spending package last week but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blew up that bill and issued her own 1,440-page rescue package that was stuffed with progressive wish-list items that had nothing to do with the national coronavirus emergency.
Pelosi tried to upend the American election system in favor of Democrats by including mandatory early voting changes across the entire country and universal ballot harvesting—a highly controversial tactic used to flip GOP House seats in Southern California in 2018.
She further attempted to make federal agencies increase usage of “minority banks,” boost a laundry list of “diversity” initiatives and pass an extraordinary amount of “green” special-interest giveaways.
Those items all failed. But Sen. Scott ripped the special interest projects that did make the cut.
Some of those items include:
- $75 million for the National Endowment of the Arts
- $75 million for the National Endowment of the Humanities
- $50 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences
- $25 million for the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts
- $25 million for salary increases for the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.
Another proposal undermines decades of private-sector progress against labor-union excesses. The bill includes a mandatory provision that requires businesses with 500-10,000 employees to stay “neutral” during union organizing efforts if they take any stimulus support funds.