Goodies

As usual, the stimulus package currently in the Senate (and another under development in the House) are being held hostage to partisan politics. That's normal ... except that every politician tells us our country in a crisis situation. Given that, you'd think that the proposed legislation would focus solely on the crisis. You'd be wrong.

The Democrats have loaded the legislation with goodies that have NOTHING to do with the threat of COVID-19. Newsmax provides a list:

The 11 Democratic demands include:

• $300 million in funding for public broadcasting;
• Expansive new tax credits for solar and wind energy;
• New emissions standards for airlines and a requirement for full carbon offset by 2025;
• Required same-day voter registration and early voting;
• Bailouts for the U.S. Postal Service, the union pension fund and student loans;
• Retirement plans for community newspaper employees;
• Publication of corporate pay statistics by race, and race statistics for all corporate boards;
• A $1 billion “Cash for Clunkers”-style program where the government buys planes from airlines;
• $1.5 million to study climate change mitigation efforts in civil aviation and aerospace industries;
• New and burdensome OSHA requirements on hospitals; and,
• $1 billion to build on a program expanded by President Barack Obama that provides discounted phone service for low-income consumers.

The Dems' trained hamsters in the media never mention the 11 items listed, but keep talking about a "slush fund" (a.k.a., loans and credits, along with hard cash to be provided to assist corporations that have been badly hurt by the economic shutdown). One can certainly debate the size and structure of these funds, but at least they're focused on the COVID-19 crisis. Can the same be said for same day voter registration?

Roger Simon comments:

... what the world is watching is a political party exploiting a situation out of a bizarre combination of habit and sleaziness, not to mention the ever-popular lust for power.

The habit part is knee-jerk ideology of the lib-progressive sort. It comes out like a computer program, albeit a moribund one. If this, then that.

Plug in virtually any code word—“workingman (or woman!),” “the people,” “corporate bad guys,” “Big Pharma” (you know, the evil folks working 24/7 to invent a vaccine against the new plague) and so forth—and the results spit out accordingly.

Example: Apparently one of the Dems’ demands was that airlines knuckle under to their carbon foot print strictures—this from the paleo-hypocrites who fly around endlessly in private jets. Who could’ve predicted it? (HINT: anyone breathing)

That the airlines could go bankrupt means little to them (until they need to go some place).

The sleaziness part referred to above couldn’t be more obvious. In a time of crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II, the Democrats are playing politics as if nothing has happened. Just thinking about it makes you want to… wash your hands. (Hey, there’s a good side to everything.)

If all of this weren't so predictable it would be shocking.

UPDATE (3/25/2020):
---------------------------
A little good news. COVID-19 economic legislation will be passed today without the goodies listed in the body of the post. It looks like the Dems decided that the optics were really, really bad. But it wasn't the optics, it was the intent to take advantage of a crisis to pass stuff you could never get passed otherwise.