The Morning Briefing: We Need a Vaccine to Save Us From Bipartisan 'Relief' Bills

We Should Be More Relieved By the Relief, Shouldn’t We?

Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. I’m Zooming myself more these days.

Much has been said and written about the deeply partisan divide in the United States these days, especially the rift between our elected representatives in Washington, D.C. The implication is always that bipartisan cooperation between Republicans and Democrats is what America needs more than anything.

Let me state emphatically here that I am not a real fan.

I’m logically consistent on this. I’m also a big fan of government shutdowns. The less Congress is working, the safer it is for the wallets of American taxpayers. It’s even worse when the GOP and the Dems are working together. It’s real Stephen King stuff for the hard-earned dollars of the citizens then.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the “debate” over the spending bill because I’ve seen how that sausage is made too many times to expect that this time would have been any different. I was quite surprised that this one is so awful that I got a text about it yesterday morning from a friend who hasn’t worked in politics in a few years.

Why do these people have to ever get along?

On Monday, Victoria wrote that President Trump should veto the bill, and Bryan wrote one yesterday indicating that the president agrees:

Noting that the bill is more than 5,000 pages long, and that no one in Congress has had time to read it before voting on it, Trump said that “it has almost nothing to do with COVID.”

“This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia. $134 million to Burma. $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment,” the president said.

“$25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan. $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.”

Shifting to the domestic side of the spending, Trump called out “$40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., which is not even open for business. $1 billion for the Smithsonian,” which was first reported here at PJ Media, “and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art,” which he noted are also not open.

“The bill also allows stimulus checks for the family members of illegal aliens,” the president said, “allowing them to get up to $1,800 each. This is far more than the Americans are given.”

There’s the thing — all of the media chatter about this has been referring to it as a COVID relief bill. Yes, we’re all aware that this is how these spending bills get done. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? This little pork dance just gets worse with each new spending bill. Ninety-nine percent of the people who get elected to the House or Senate immediately become afflicted with brain damage that renders them incapable of understanding the meaning of “fiscal responsibility.”

OK, I plucked the “ninety-nine percent” out of thin air, but I’m sure that’s not far off. There were six Republicans who opted not to play along with this insane reindeer game:

6 Republican against voted against the relief bill:

Marsha Blackburn
Rick Scott
Ron Johnson
Mike Lee
Rand Paul
Ted Cruz

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 22, 2020

I’m very proud to say that I’ve met all but one of them and had good conversations with a few of them.

We’re going to need more people than that that pushing back against the boondoggles, however. Passing a massive spending bill that will further burden a taxpaying public that has largely been unemployed or underemployed for almost a year is unconscionable. The fact that they’re patting themselves on the back for throwing those same taxpayers a $600 crumb at the end of the process is a hot mess of tone-deafness and evil.

The Morning Briefing: We Need a Vaccine to Save Us From Bipartisan 'Relief' Bills

We Should Be More Relieved By the Relief, Shouldn’t We?

There’s a Never-Ending Supply of Awful With the Dems

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