- $4,184,000 for Office of Ethics expenses.
- $85,476,000 for Economic Research Services
- $183,921,000 for National Agricultural Statistics Service
- $60,131,000 for the Risk Management Agency
- $21,000,000 for the Central Utah Project
- $3,850,000 for the Office of the President
- $13,641,000 for the White House Residence
- $18,400,000 for the Office of National Drug Control Policy
- $700,000,000 for Sudan.
- $500 million to Israel
- $453 million to Ukraine
- $135 million to Burma
- $85.5 million to Cambodia
- $1.4 billion for “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act.”
- $130 million to Nepal
- $10,000,000 for gender programs in Pakistan.
- $13 billion for farmers and agriculture, including money under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program for growers and livestock, dairy, and poultry producers.
- $82 billion in funding for schools and universities to assist with the reopening, including $2.75 billion for private K-12 education.
- $16 billion for airlines to pay the salaries of workers and contractors.
- $14 billion for mass transit agencies.
- $10 billion for highways.
- $1 billion for Amtrak.
Even though the bill passed with overwhelming support in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, six Republicans stood firmly against it. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee(R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Rick Scott (R-FL), all stood firmly against the bill, which had been bundled with a $1.4 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. Their criticisms largely focused on the size of the legislation, both in terms of the dollar amount and the bill’s page count. The reasons for their “No” Votes?
Rand Paul: “To so-called conservatives who are quick to identify the socialism of Democrats: If you vote for this spending monstrosity, you are no better,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “When you vote to pass out free money, you lose your soul, and you abandon any semblance of moral or fiscal integrity forever,” he said, targeting his fellow Republicans.
Rick Scott: “Once again, in classic Washington style, vital programs are attached to a massive omnibus spending bill that mortgages our kids & grandkid’s futures,” he tweeted. “Therefore, I can’t support this bill.”
Marsha Blackburn: “I cannot support nearly $2.4 trillion in spending that will make a recovery even harder,” she said in a statement. “I have serious concerns with provisions buried in the 5,593-page bill, such as expanded visas, Pell grants for prisoners, and households with illegal aliens receiving economic impact payments. For these reasons, I voted no on the passage of this legislation.”
Ron Johnson: “The dysfunction of Washington, D.C. was on full display as Congress combined covid relief with a massive omnibus spending bill three months past the deadline and into the current fiscal year,” Johnson said in a statement. “This monstrosity was 5,593 pages long and passed only nine hours after the Senate first saw it.”
Ted Cruz: “It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then—hours later—demand an up-or-down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read,” Cruz tweeted. Cruz also railed against Democrats in a statement posted Tuesday morning, claiming that the bill “advances the interests of the radical Left, special interests, and swamp lobbyists, with funding going towards expanding authority for more H-2B visas for foreign workers while a near-record number of Americans remain unemployed.”
Mike Lee: “Because of the length, no one may have the opportunity to read it between now and the time that we will vote,” Lee said in the video. “And I am certain that this has been cobbled together by a tiny handful of members of Congress and their staffs and to the exclusion of 98% of members of Congress of both political parties in both houses.”
“Not Enough, Not Enough!”
That was the reason, we are told, that Pelosi and Schumer continued to reject stimulus offers from President Trump and Republicans since August. Let’s face it: there will NEVER be enough “free money” for Nancy Pelosi. Keep in mind, the deal Pelosi just accepted and was passed in the House and Senate pumped “only” $900 Billion into the American marketplace. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? Why would Pelosi settle for that paltry sum when Trump himself offered twice that to Democrats in October?
Pelosi, in an October letter to her Democrat colleagues, explained why she is so dissatisfied with the recent $1.8 trillion proposal from the Trump administration, which she says “falls significantly short of what this pandemic and deep recession demand.” To illustrate her point, she outlined eight ways that their proposed stimulus package falls short, citing a different Democratic colleague for each issue she raised.
Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues say that the $1.8 billion proposal from the Trump administration:
- Didn’t include enough money for state and local governments.
- Lacked funding or planning for COVID-19 testing, tracing, and surveillance.
- Didn’t expand the Child Tax Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- Failed to provide enough protections for tenants who are at risk of being evicted.
- Didn’t protect workers or offer enough assistance to child care programs.
- Didn’t do enough to help small businesses.
- Provided no funding for state and local governments to ensure safe and secure voting.
- Jeopardized the completion of an accurate Census.
Those were her words, not mine!
How did she get from “No Way!” in October to “Yes, let ‘er Rip!” in December for half the money!
It’s simple, folks. If you throw every conceivable factor for a COVID-19 stimulus bill from Congress into one big pile, to Nancy Pelosi, the least important would be “to help individual Americans who are in dire financial straits.” How can I maintain that? Just look at the facts:
- The October Trump Stimulus included $1200 for each American — twice as much as Pelosi agreed to.
- Pelosi walked away from her demands for big bucks to help states in their elections. (She and others took care of the elections with no extra money!)
- There are no provisions we can find among the 5,000+ pages that address Census problems.
- Also, we cannot find any expansion dollars for Child Tax Credit or Earned Income Tax Credits.
The timing of this, coupled with the fifty percent reduction in her “lowest possible agreeable dollar amount” demands an explanation. If Pelosi was such a great and successful leader as we are led to believe, how could she possibly reconcile cutting her package in half, totally at the expense of the American people she so religiously demanded she would never let down!
Summary
The most significant factor for consideration in this bill is that in no way was it driven based upon the needs of the American people that result from COVID-19! If it did, where are the relief segments for hundreds of thousands of small businesses? Other than an extension of the PPP Program, there are none. How could any government servant look at the numbers of unemployed Americans solely due to government shutdowns, not at the hands of the virus or American individuals, but due totally to the egregious power and fear-mongering edicts of Democrat governors and mayors across the nation? There should be a quid pro quo demand on one page of the 5000+ pages in the bill: a page that details how many D.C. paychecks are members of Congress going to forego to show Americans they care for us? Not one federal government employee missed a paycheck or lost a job during the six months Americans lived in “COVID Limbo!” This while tens of millions of Americans struggled to survive during insane lockdowns that came arbitrarily from medical “experts” like Fauci and Birx through socialists-in-disguise mayors and governors that changed the lives of Americans who many of will NEVER fully recover.
“Listen to the Science!” they cried. We DID listen, but government officials did not. Scientists told us we MUST get our kids back in school. They told us that suicides and chronic depression cases skyrocketed due to lockdowns. Divorce number soared. Domestic crimes escalated. Crimes of every sort ramped up at the hands of COVID-19 lockdowns.
To what end? Remember, in the beginning; they told us a 30-day lockdown would put us on the downside of the spread of COVID-19. 30-days came and went. Infection numbers just kept climbing. Wearing masks did not work; social distancing did not work; deaths continued to rise in number. We saw inexpensive drugs achieve dramatic results worldwide in stopping COVID-19. The “experts” said those drugs would cause severe problems and even deaths. Meanwhile, Hydroxychloriquine has proven to STOP severe cases and deaths in a higher percentage of patients than any other drug on the market.
It seems to many that all of this, COVID-19 and all of its ancillary issues, including serious illness and deaths, has been used by politicians. It is unconscionable to consider the possibility of anyone weaponizing such a disease for political purposes. But millions of Americans are confident that is exactly what happened. And I’m one of them.
Put all of this in the context of where we stand as a nation. We’re more divided than ever; we wink at laws and reject their enforcement instead of amending or abolishing statutes with which we disagree; we turn over our rights to free and fair elections to politicians who stood idly by and watched waves of fraudulent voting processes sweep across the nation; we benignly allow those to whom we have ceded our power as citizens to flood the country with illegals, doing so in the name of “fairness.”
This is the nation in which we live today. By the way: none of that will change anytime soon. Doing so would require a vast and dramatic groundswell of Americans pushing back against egregious government tactics designed to see how far they can push control of the citizenry. To what end? Apparently, to push us into a “Socialist-Light” environment where Big Government assumes control of every area of our lives.
Fill a pot with boiling water and drop a frog into the pot of water. The frog will immediately leap from the pot. Fill a pot with cold water and put a frog into the pot. Turn the temperature on low under the pot. What happens? The frog will simply boil to death as the water temperature slowly rises about 212 degrees and boils.
The American Pot is on the stove. We’re the frogs. How are we going to handle it? Will we allow the government that we see testing us with COVID-19 crazy regulations that don’t work along with what they tell us is $900 Billion of COVID-19 stimulus money they say is to “carry us through the pandemic?” Or will we lash out and start demanding our government “servants” (which they certainly are NOT) do what they swore to do in their oaths of office?
It’s all about Power and Control!
“Calm down, Dan…they’re doing the best that they can! We know you and many other Americans are upset at members of Congress. You have NO right to expect any preferential treatment. After all, they gave you $600 of your own money!”
