Quote (thundercock @ 27 Feb 2021 04:01)
Outside of the minimum wage demand, most of the bill is related to covid fallout such as reduced classroom sizes to encourage social distancing.
The editorial board of the WSJ disagrees big time:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-non-covid-spending-blowout-11613937485Quote
[...] All told, this generous definition of Covid-related provisions tallies some $825 billion. The rest of the bill—more than $1 trillion—is a combination of bailouts for Democratic constituencies, expansions of progressive programs, pork, and unrelated policy changes. [...] It’s a progressive blowout for the ages that does little for the economy but will finance Democratic interest groups for years. Please don’t call it Covid relief.
They list a ton of pork that is in this bill. The biggest highlight: instead of distributing the federal money proportionately among all states, they try to reward hard-lockdown blue states and punish low-restriction red states:
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Start with the $350 billion for state and local governments and cities and counties, even as state revenues have largely recovered since the spring. Democrats also changed the funding formula to ensure most of the dollars go to blue states that imposed strict economic lockdowns.
Last year’s Cares Act distributed money mainly by state population, but much of the $220 billion for states in the new bill will be allocated based on average unemployment over the three-month period ending in December. Andrew Cuomo’s New York (8.2% unemployment in December) and Gavin Newsom’s California (9%) get rewarded for crushing their businesses, while Kristi Noem’s South Dakota (3%) is penalized for staying open.
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The bill increases the child tax credit to $3,000 from $2,000 ($99 billion) and temporarily expands the Earned Income Tax Credit to certain additional childless adults ($25 billion).
Childless adults are made up by various disproportionately Democratic-leaning constituencies, like college students or urban professionals.
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This being Congress, Members are also slipping in pet causes. Our favorite is $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York to Canada and is a priority for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. And don’t overlook the nearly $500 million for, as the CBO puts it, “grants to fund activities related to the arts, humanities, libraries and museums, and Native American language preservation.
Very covid-related indeed.
Dems also try to push long-term liberal policy goals, like the aforementioned $15 minimum wage or tinkering with healthcare:
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The bill also spends $15 billion to provide a temporary five percentage-point increase in the federal Medicaid match to states that expand eligibility to lower-income adults. This is bait for the dozen or so states that have resisted ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, which enrolls working age, childless adults above the poverty line. The political goal overall is to chip away at private coverage on the way to Medicare for All.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 26 2021 09:55pm