Justin Haskins: $3T coronavirus relief bill passed by House Dems funds most radical programs in US history

[The Nut Party]

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/justin-haskins-3t-coronavirus-relief-bill-
passed-by-house-dems-funds-most-radical-programs-in-us-history

The House passed Democrats’ budget-busting $3 trillion coronavirus relief
bill on a 208-199 vote Friday night – but thankfully, the radical
legislation is expected to be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled
Senate. Only one Republican voted for the measure. -- Rep. Pete King of
New York.

On top of that, the White House has said President Trump would veto the
bill in the highly unlikely event it wins Senate passage.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has acknowledged that the HEROES
(Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions) Act will not
become law, but said it can be the basis for negotiations with Senate
Republicans and the Trump administration.

HOUSE PASSES $3T CORONAVIRUS RELIEF -- THE MOST EXPENSIVE BILL IN HISTORY

Democrats seem to take the position in the legislation that money is no
object when it comes to spending trillions upon trillions of dollars under
the cover of helping the American people deal with the coronavirus
pandemic. In reality, Democrats are using the pandemic to justify their
wish list of far-left Big Government schemes more extreme than anything
ever enacted in American history.

The $3 trillion relief bill would be the costliest in our history as well,
and would come on top of the $2.2 trillion CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief
and Economic Security) Act passed by Congress and signed into law by
President Trump in March.

Perhaps if members of Congress spent as much time thinking about the
impact of these free-spending bills as they did coming up with clever
acronyms some of the most absurd provisions of both pieces of legislation
could have been avoided.

Unbelievably, some House Democrats on the far-left fringe of the party
actually complained that the House bill was too modest. They’d like to
spend even more than $3 trillion.

"Do I think it should be bolder? Yes," socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters. “Do I think there should be more,
especially as a starting offer? Absolutely.”

Among the craziest provisions of the 1,800-page HEROES Act are a temporary
elimination of the cap on state and local tax deductions on federal income
taxes. This is a move that would mostly benefit wealthy taxpayers in blue
states – people like Nancy Pelosi, among other Democratic lawmakers.

The bill would also give an eye-popping $1 trillion bailout to state and
local governments to deal with their budget shortfalls caused by the
shutdown of businesses and stay-at-home orders designed to halt the spread
of the pandemic.

Democrats clearly don’t believe in belt-tightening by state and local
governments to eliminate wasteful programs during hard times. Instead, the
Democrats just want to run up the national debt to stratospheric levels.
Want to know who will ultimately have to pay higher taxes to pay off that
debt? Look in the mirror.

Other parts of the Democratic legislation passed by the House call for up
to $10,000 of college debt forgiveness and a whopping $25 billion for the
Postal Service.

Perhaps worst of all, the legislation would provide yet another round of
$1,200 economic stimulus checks for most Americans, as well as an
extension of the $600 weekly unemployment insurance bonus to jobless
adults until the end of January 2021 – with an option to extend the bonus
payments through March 2021.

The unemployment bonus – which is paid on top of other unemployment
benefits – would provide jobless workers with as much as an additional
$31,200 over the course of a year for doing absolutely nothing.

After adding the first and second rounds of stimulus checks and state
unemployment benefits to the unemployment bonuses proposed by Democrats,
it’s clear that tens of millions of unemployed people in low-wage jobs
could end up receiving significantly more money in government benefits
than they earned while working.

One analysis by Ernie Tedeschi, an economist who previously worked for the
Treasury Department, estimates that unemployed workers in all but a dozen
states now receive about as much or more in government benefits than they
did in wages prior to the economic shutdown – and his analysis didn’t
factor in two rounds of $1,200 stimulus checks.

Already, employers reopening their businesses have reported that they are
having a hard time hiring employees for low-paying jobs because working
would give so many people less money than they could collect in
unemployment payments.

Discouraging people from working all the way through January 2021 or even
longer is the last thing politicians should be doing in the midst of the
most significant economic crash since the Great Depression, but that’s
exactly what House Democrats are clamoring to do. The biggest reason for
the proposal is likely driven by politics, not economic considerations.

The proof is in Democrats’ timeline. With so many unknowns, why would
Democrats choose to call for extending bonus unemployment benefits through
January 2021? Why not extend the bonus for a month or two and then
reassess how state economies are performing?

After all, many states are just now starting to reopen parts of their
economies, and it’s still unclear how successful those moves will be.

The most obvious reason for extending unemployment bonus payments is that
January 2021 marks the beginning of the start of the next presidential
term. If former Vice President Joe Biden ends up defeating President Trump
in November, what better way to begin Biden’s time in office than to have
millions of workers forced back into the job market?

It’s no wonder then that Pelosi said at a press conference discussing the
HEROES Act that it is “really quite an exciting time for us because we
have a monumental need for our country at this sad time.”

This sums up Democrats’ view of the crisis: Sure, the coronavirus pandemic
is a tragedy, but what an “exciting” tragedy for those of us looking to
expand government at every turn!

It’s perfectly reasonable to target government aid to those who have been
hit hardest by government decisions to shut down the economy.

As the old saying goes, “if you break it, you bought it,” and in this
case, the government unquestionably “broke” the economy and forced
millions of people out of their jobs.

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But government relief programs should always be as limited and targeted as
possible, and in this case, congressional Democrats and even many
Republicans have chosen to do the opposite. They want to hook as many
people on government aid programs as possible, instead of focusing on
finding effective ways to get the country back to work as safely and
quickly as they can.

The absurdity of sending $1,200 payments to millions of people who haven’t
lost their jobs and calling it “stimulus relief” proves just how
outrageous this entire gargantuan cash giveaway has become.

Why would you send “relief” to people who haven’t lost their jobs and thus
aren’t in any need of relief? And why would government try to “stimulate”
the economy by infusing it with cash while at the same time keeping most
of it closed?

You know what would actually stimulate the economy? Opening it!

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From the beginning of this crisis to the present time, Congress and many
state governments have failed the American people – and they’ve done so
spectacularly.

Americans shouldn’t forget that fact the next time politicians ask for our
votes.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY JUSTIN HASKINS