The COVID-19 relief bill has been widely and justifiably panned by both conservatives and liberals. Now, Donald Trump has joined the chorus of critics by calling the bill a “disgrace.”
Trump called for the $600 given to Americans to be raised to $2000.
“The bill also allows stimulus checks for the family members of illegal aliens, allowing them to get up $1,800 each. This is far more than the Americans are given. Despite all of this wasteful spending, and much more, the $900 billion package provides hard-working taxpayers with only $600 each in relief payments and not enough money is given to small businesses — and in particular, restaurants, whose owners have suffered so grievously. Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it. It wasn’t their fault, it was China’s fault. Not their fault. I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple.”
He also called for all extraneous pork and agenda items to be removed from the 5,500-page bill.
“Among the more than 5,000 pages in this bill, which nobody in Congress has read because of its length and complexity, it’s called the COVID Relief Bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID. This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia, $134 million to Burma, $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment. $25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan, $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. $40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, which is not even open for business. $1 billion for the Smithsonian and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art. Likewise, these facilities are essentially not open.”
Trump did not explicitly threaten to veto the legislation, but he did imply that he would when he said,
“I am also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items of this legislation and to send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package, and maybe that administration will be me. And we’ll get it done.”
There is almost nothing good that can be said about this bill. Nobody read the bill before they voted on it, it’s full of pork, foreign aid, and sops to donors like draconian copyright protections. The bill also adds to the deficit and simultaneously has direct payments to Americans, which is generally a bad idea but also makes them so small as to be insulting under the circumstances. The fact that the government impoverished so many Americans this year with ridiculous coronavirus restrictions, that Democrats waited until after the election to agree to any kind of stimulus just to hurt Trump’s reelection chances and then this monstrosity is what all of them came up with should tell you everything you need to know about why no one should trust the government.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know. You can find him on Parler here.
