Nancy Pelosi couldn’t contain her glee after the election: “That is a total game changer – a new president and a vaccine.” To celebrate, she hoisted a $2.3 trillion pandemic relief/government funding bill upon tax payers. I unpacked the 5,593-page pork package that helps working families about as much as a sharp stick in the eye helps a headache. No wonder only 15% of the nation approve of Congress (source: Gallup).
A clear-eyed Democrat would see the truly needy are now working-class Americans, for whom COVID-19 is an existential threat. In 2020, their choices are either forced lay-offs that kill household savings, or forced attendance at jobs that expose them to COVID. Yet, their holiday gift is $300 supplemental unemployment payments (down from $600 provided in the first relief bill). No wonder Trump won the blue-collar vote.
If Pelosi doesn’t care about working-class adults, it must be poor children who pull at her heart strings, right? Wrong! They get only $600 in relief (half of what adults got in the first relief bill). But wait, there’s $10 million for gender programs in Pakistan, $40 million for the Kennedy Center (on top of $25 million in the first relief bill), $700 million for the Sudan, $453 million for the Ukraine – and billions for other needy nations.
Stealth spending in so-called relief bills is not unusual, but the Swamp Act of 2020 is a real head-shaker. Big Tobacco and Hollywood aren’t needy, but got bans on mailing e-cigarettes and streaming copyrighted material (new felonies). How about funds for a study of the 1908 Springfield race riots, a commission to educate consumers of the risks of storing fuel containers near open flames, and $1 billion for the Smithsonian? Nancy’s outdone herself (not!) this time.
The US is at an economic tipping point: the national debt is $27.5 trillion ($4.7 trillion higher than December 2019), the Federal Debt to GDP ratio is 129:1 ($129 in debt to every $100 in gross domestic product), and total US debt (government and private) is $82 trillion. So, how can Ms. Pelosi use “urgently needed funds” or “emergency” to describe $1 billion to fund a Women’s History Museum and American Latino Museum at the Smithsonian? Short answer: she cannot.
Turns out Pelosi is a woman of limited intelligence, whose one skill is holding her caucus by treating the piglets to the tax-funded federal trough; thereby maintaining her Perk-o-saurus Rex lifestyle. Here, she treats we the people to a video of her $24,000 refrigerator. There, she’s caught getting a wash-and-blow without a mask. It’s good to be queen; line-jumping to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Truth be told, she’s killing her party.
Without the self-destructive Trump as president, Democrats will be blamed for all bad things going forward. Biden’s day-one priorities are to rejoin Paris Accord, reverse travel ban, send DACA bill to Congress, impose limits on oil and gas, give “asylum” to Central Americans inside the USA, raise taxes, and sign his Mask Order. Killing a domestic energy boom and adding COVID carriers aren’t relief in the minds of most Americans and, in 2022, Pelosi will suffer death by pork.