On Friday the Senate passed a $1,900,000,000,000 Covid relief package espoused by President Joe Biden. 50 senators voted for it, 50 senators voted against it. Vice President and soon to replace the dementia riddled Biden Kamala Harris cast the tie breaking vote. The Reverend Raphael Warnock proclaimed “this is how Democracy works!” Yes, flipping a coin to break a tie is certainly democracy in action. Dumbass.
Many Americans will receive an additional $1,400 stimulus payment as a part of this legislation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly noted how important getting this money out to people is. Of course two years ago when people were getting the same amount of money due to Trump tax policies she called them “crumbs.” So here are a few more crumbs for you, courtesy of Nancy.
I’m certainly glad that many people who are behind on their payments will get this help. Of course there will be a lot of others who get this payment who don’t need it. It kind of reminds me of the old parades we went to as kids when the float riders would hurl fist fulls of candy through the air into the crowd. Let it rain and pray for tootsie rolls and jolly ranchers! Those with the longest arms will reap the best rewards!
Some people will get caught up with their new found riches – hooray! What happens when April comes around then? Hidden by the media in the news on Friday also was a lousy job creation number that the Democrats didn’t want to talk about (and I don’t blame them). Where is this economy going anyway? Stay tuned TV fans.
So what else is in this bill? I’m glad you asked. $350,000,000,000 will go to “state government relief.” Let me interpret that for you – poorly managed states run by Democrats will be bailed out of their financial woes. You know the usual suspects – California and New York. Hey, aren’t the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader from California and New York? What a coincidence.
Teachers and schools, not nearly as important as fiscally failing blue states, would get roughly half of that. Covid Testing, which I kind of thought this whole bill was about fighting the virus, would get only 50 billion. Oh, and hey, what about vaccinations? Well, don’t need that as much as we need to bail out states, a mere $20 billion should do for that, particularly since it’s been going so swimmingly well.
Also stuck into a slew of 45 amendments to the bill (yes, 45) that were voted on was the possibility of raising the minimum wage to $15.00/hour. We can, and will, spend an entire column on minimum wage on the blog here at some point, but again it amazes me at just how ignorant people are to what that really means.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour. I ask you this – do you know literally anyone working any job making $7.25/hour? Of course not. My 16 year old nephew makes $9+/hour at Kroger. My Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere Indiana is paying an equivalent of $11/hour already. Why does the government feel the need to interfere in the market? Oh yah, because it gets votes. Never mind that by artificially jacking up wages we see what happens – hours get cut, service goes down, and in the worst case, businesses close.
The House will still have to go through and work on the final version of this bill, but it almost certainly now will pass at that level of spending. When Trump was elected in 2016 the Senate was slightly Republican controlled. Vice President Mike Pence was called in to break a tie only once in his first thirty days in office – to confirm Betsy Devoss as Secretary of Education. That vote didn’t add a dime to the deficit. Only 16 days into the Biden presidency Kamala Harris has been forced to come in and cast a tie breaking vote and it cost you the taxpayer $1.9 Trillion.
Democracy in action indeed.
Who will save us???