House Democrats’ Third Coronavirus Supplemental Appropriation Bill Is an Outrage
The Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act (H.R. 6379) is the most irresponsible piece of fiscal legislation to come out of the profligate Congress for a long time, at $2.5 trillion. It is an insult to a nation in the throes of a scary pandemic, witnessing horrific deaths from oxygen starvation, with no obvious end in sight.
What does coronavirus have to do with requiring a labor union representative on every airline’s board of directors? What do provisions of the radical “Green New Deal” have to do with alleviating the suffering of this nation?
The answers are nothing. Twice. But these are just two in this endless—1,400 pages long—litany of reckless spending. There is no way that the Senate will ever agree to almost everything that’s in the it, much less getting it past the President’s desk. It is a colossal waste of time.
Meanwhile the nation suffers and real needs will go unmet. New York City is on the precipice of medical chaos, where population density makes COVID-19 control nearly impossible, and the health care system may collapse from the disease itself. Chicago won’t be far behind, and it’s frightening to consider the prospects for Detroit, a city with virtually no infrastructure left.
And what is the Democrats’ response to this?
A billion dollars for a “cash for clunkers” program to retire older, relatively inefficient planes that emit too much dreaded carbon dioxide. Never mind that it is hoped that warmer weather will inhibit COVID-19 just like it attenuates seasonal flu. Global warming doesn’t have a thing to do with coronavirus and yet here is one of many climate-related provisions in H.R. 5679.
Oh, and those planes might be run on remarkably expensive biofuels. That’s because of Title VII, Section 101, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Development Program, part of a $100 million research add-on. Anyone who can’t see the connection to coronavirus musts be blind!
Speaking of airplanes, this legislation requires commercial aviation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2035 and 50 percent by 2050. It’s not 100 percent, but it will do 0 percent about the plague. But passengers will be harangued: this legislation requires the airlines to tell each and every one how much carbon dioxide will be emitted as a result of their travel.
This is a bill that can’t pass up any special interest. Every lobby on K Street sent in their requests. How about dramatically increasing tax credits for unstable, intermittent “renewable” technologies like solar energy and windmills? How is this sold as having a whit to do with a horrible disease?
Even the Post Office gets a slice. It gets all of its debt owed to the Treasury cancelled. And $10,000 of any student loan debt is forgiven. That won’t do anything about coronavirus, but it will enrage the responsible people who have paid their loans off.
It also gets in the ballot box, requiring early voting in every federal election and same-day registration.
So, Congress fiddles for the special interests while the bodies pile up, and ominous evidence is beginning to accrue that nations that appeared to be successful in controlling the virus may be starting to experience a second outbreak.
That’s something really worth worrying about, as is the pandering mindset of the House Democrats, costing the country what will eventually be an inflationary fortune while nothing about the nightmare descending upon the nation they purport to represent. Less than nothing because wasting resources on a bill like this takes away others that are needed now.