Pelosi, Dems' reckless $3 trillion coronavirus aid package all about growing government: Steve Moore

Speaker Pelosi has introduced a spending plan that pays off nearly every imaginable left-wing interest group

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly assured a group of liberal lobbyists, donors and activists last week that she would "go big" in the Phase 4 round of coronavirus spending. This would be a "Rooseveltian moment," with trillions of dollars of new spending, she promised.

To the left, crises like these really are "terrible things to waste," and on Tuesday, the Speaker delivered on the promise with her $3 trillion spending plan that pays off nearly every imaginable left-wing interest group.

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The plan is stuffed with goodie bags for teacher unions, trial lawyers, arts groups, environmental activists, postal employees and even super-rich Democratic donors.

This is a bodacious plan, preposterous in its financial irresponsibility, but the speaker and her colleagues see in this terrible disease the opportunity for a fiscal sweepstakes. She seized the moment.

Republicans in Congress and President Trump need to unanimously and loudly denounce this New New Deal scam, which would pad the wallets of those who are funded by programs that have zero to do with the virus itself. Coronavirus didn't create the $100 billion Illinois and New Jersey pension deficits. 

If the “HEROES Act” were to pass, the Congress will have authorized some $6 trillion in coronavirus measures this year – more than double what has been spent adjusted for inflation in peacetime.  New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been critical of the funding scheme because, get this, it doesn't spend enough.

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We haven't yet waded through all of the some 1,600 pages of the bill, but the particulars of the "HEROES Act" are spinning heads around.

The list includes:

  • Some $1 trillion for blue state budget repairs and pension bailouts. 
  • $50 million for "environmental justice grants to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus." 
  • Restoration of the state and local (SALT) tax deduction for blue state millionaires and billionaires. -- This would be the biggest tax cut in history for the top 1 percent in income.
  • $20 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities
  • Extension of the $600 unemployment insurance supplement (on top of 100 percent replacement of wages through direct UI benefits. This is the scandal-ridden program that in some 30 state pays people more money to stay unemployed than to get back to work;
  • $100 million for OSHA funding -- we should be deregulating not increasing regulation
  • Extending unemployment benefits and financial aid to illegal immigrants
  • A postal service bailout. 

Almost none of these things listed have anything to do with the coronavirus.

It's a classic case of leftwing overreach.

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Republicans in Congress and President Trump need to unanimously and loudly denounce this New New Deal scam, which would pad the wallets of those who are funded by programs that have zero to do with the virus itself. Coronavirus didn't create the $100 billion Illinois and New Jersey pension deficits.

The 1,600-page bill mentions the word “economy” exactly twice, according to the Washington Free Beacon. That’s because is about growing the government, not the private sector.

President Trump and the congressional Republicans should reject this plan and get back to what Trump did so successfully to stimulate the economy prior to the madness in Washington.

It's time to contrast the Democrat's Mad Cow Disease spending scheme with a GOP plan that includes a  payroll tax holiday that will most benefit low-income workers, deregulation, and lawsuit shields for workers and employers.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and a senior fellow at FreedomWorks.  

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