Around 2:00 am Saturday morning, the House passed the $1.9 trillion COVID relief spending bill. The bill includes a $1,400 payoff to American citizens. However, actual covid “relief” comes along with an incredible amount of special interest payoffs.
The final vote was 219-212.
No Republican voted for the bill. And two Democrats voted against the bill (Jared Golden of Maine and Kurt Schrader of Oregon).
Speaking to the Associated Press, Golden said “During challenging times, the country needs its elected leaders to work together to meet the most urgent needs in their communities. This bill addresses urgent needs, and then buries them under a mountain of unnecessary or untimely spending.”
Representative McCarthy (R-CA) spoke on the House floor late Friday criticizing the bill saying, “I’m about to say something that the American people don’t want to hear—the swamp is back.”
McCarthy went on to say, “The amount of money that actually goes to defeating the virus is less than nine percent.” He described Democrats as being “so embarrassed by all the non-COVID waste in this bill that they are jamming it through in the dead of night.”
The bill includes payouts to the American people, as well as coronavirus vaccination support. But many see the bill as a payoff to swampy interest groups that have found new federal inroad since the new administration took office.
Along with a job-killing $15/hour minimum wage requirement, the bill included hundreds of millions of dollars going toward unnecessary and non-covid related organizations and projects. Examples of such wasteful spending are:
- $270 million given to arts and humanities endowments
- $200 million to libraries and museums
- $100 million to an electronic train in San Fransisco
McCarthy said the bill is “the most progressive domestic legislation in a generation.”
