Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who supports a pared down version of a coronavirus relief bill, said Sunday that the White House never reached out to GOP lawmakers on his own package, despite President Biden's unity call.
"If you say you want bipartisanship … and then you have a budget reconciliation which is chock-full of payouts to Democratic constituency groups … you don't want bipartisanship, you want the patina of bipartisanship," Cassidy said on "Fox News Sunday."
He added that the White House wasn't even interested in working with more conservative members of his own party.
"The president's team did not reach out to anybody in our group, either Democrat or Republican, when they fashioned their proposal," Cassidy said. "So if you want unity, if you want bipartisanship, you ought to start with a group that's shown it's willing to work together for a common solution. They did not."
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginian who is also one of those more conservative Democrats, also felt as though he'd been left out in the cold.
Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a local West Virginia TV station to tout the president's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that he calls the American Rescue Plan, and no one bothered calling Manchin for his own input.
"I saw [the Harris interview], I couldn't believe it. No one called me [about it]," Manchin said. "We're going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, but we need to work together. That's not a way of working together."
And with Democrats holding only half the seats in the Senate, the White House needs his vote. As an example, Manchin was the sole Democrat who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Making it worse, Harris didn't seem to have a clue what she was talking about. She brought up "abandoned land mines" when she obviously meant "abandoned mine land," and repeated the fiction often used by Democrats that they can create jobs.
Harris said there'll be job creation around "reclaiming abandoned land mines" in West Virginia.
She added, "All of those skilled workers who are in the coal industry and transferring those skills to what we need to do in terms of dealing with reclaiming abandoned land mines."
To be clear, government does not and cannot create jobs — it can only destroy them.
The Biden administration made that abundantly clear when it destroyed tens of thousands of six-figure-income jobs with the stroke of a pen.
But while government can't create jobs, former President Trump proved it can create an environment where job creation can thrive. But raising taxes, boosting the minimum wage, imposing expensive environmental controls, and opening up borders to illegal immigration is going about it in the wrong direction.
In part, Biden's American Rescue Plan would:
- Give each American making less than $75,000 a direct payment of $1,400
- Extend unemployment benefits through September 2021 at $400 a week
- Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15
- Continue eviction and foreclosure moratoriums
- Provide $170 billion to reopen schools
Biden's plan is even angering his own liberal constituents.
Because he promised that each American would receive $2,000 immediately after his inauguration if both Georgia Senate seats flipped to Democrats, they're calling the $1,400 a snow job, and the hashtag #BidenLied trended No. 1 on Twitter throughout much of Sunday.
But more than anything it's a "blue state bailout package," giving $350 billion to those states that lost tax revenue because of their strict lockdowns — primarily Democratic-run.
The Republican COVID relief package comes in at $600 billion — less than one-third of Biden's American Rescue Plan. It lowers direct relief to $1,000 per American, and the $170 billion to help schools adapt to COVID was slashed to $20 billion.
It neither raises the federal minimum wage nor rewards states that opted to keep their businesses shut down.
Biden's not uniting the country — he isn't even uniting his party. And he seems oblivious to it.
Former President Obama liked to say that elections have consequences — and so they do.
But no one imagined that 2020 would tick everyone off — in less than two weeks.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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