COVID-19 Relief?
A quick analysis of the bill passed by Congress
Congress passed a COVID relief bill and tacked it on to a general 2021 spending bill at the last minute. The resulting bill was 5593 pages long. It was the largest bill in US history. In fact, it was so large that it couldn’t be carried into Congress and had to be wheeled in instead. People making under $75k/yr will get a $600 stimulus check. The bill also included extra funding for people on unemployment and some more funding for the States to help with education during lockdowns.
Putting aside whether or not you think any of that is a good idea for the government to do at all, that’s not all that was in this bill. As alluded to above, this bill also contains a bunch of defense spending and a ton of pork. So what was included in this bill? I put together a quick list last night right as the vote was happening in Congress that I posted on my Facebook feed so I’ll reiterate that here (with sources):
1. $500 million for Israel
2. $700 million for Sudan
3. A measure giving 93 acres of land to the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential library
4. Creates an Office of Sanctions Coordination in the State Department
5. A measure supporting Tibetan religious freedom in choosing the next Dalai Lama
6. The largest expansion of US Copyright law in the country's history (includes the CASE Act wholesale which makes DMCA strikes *felonies*)
6a. create a small claims adjudication system within the U.S. Copyright Office
7. A tax break for race horse owners (64 whole pages of new horse racing laws)
8. $2 billion for the Space Force
9. $2 billion for the Air Force
10. $4 billion for weapons for the Navy
11. $33 million for regime change in Venezuela
12. $1.4 billion for Trump's wall
13. An instruction for the Smithsonian Institute to create two new museums based on identity (one for women, one for Latinos)
14. $10 million to fund gender programs in Pakistan
15. Billions in funding for solar and renewable energy
16. Governors can’t use funding for school choice
It’s debatable whether or not some of that should be passed. But the point here is that this was all crammed together with the COVID relief so no one would think twice about it. Some of these bills (the copyright one comes to mind) were specifically defeated earlier this year only to be tacked on to this huge monstrosity of a bill literally minutes before Congress went on Christmas vacation so it could get passed last second. Not only that, but the media coverage of this has been completely misleading. If you watched or read any mainstream news sources, you’d have no idea that Congress was also passing a huge omnibus spending bill with the COVID relief. They all covered this as only a COVID relief bill. Only after the bill passed did outlets like CNN start mentioning other things in the bill. And they try to spin it like people who oppose the other stuff are blowing it out of proportion. It’s no wonder people don’t trust the media these days.
Congress passed this only hours after receiving the final text of the bill - meaning it was impossible for any of them to have read it and known what was in it before reading it. Yet they passed it almost unanimously. Per the AP:
The Senate cleared the massive package by a 92-6 vote after the House approved the COVID-19 package by another lopsided vote, 359-53.
The six Senators that voted against it? All Republicans: Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. At least a few stood up against this garbage bill. A few House Reps spoke out against it on Twitter including Libertarian Justin Amash and Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet when push came to shove, AOC still voted for the bill.
This bill and the process that brought it into being is exactly why Americans hate Congress and shows just how broken the entire system is. This isn’t unique to one party or the other. This is the political establishment in both parties not doing their jobs and only pretending to care about you and your families. There are only a small few number of Representatives and Senators who actually care and will vote against awful legislation like this. And even some of the elected officials who say they are against this cronyism and get elected for it eventually bow to political pressure and vote for it - upholding the status quo and nothing ever changes.
What’s worse is most Americans don’t even know what’s happening right under their noses. If they only knew, they’d be even more upset with the job Congress is doing than they already are.