It's not yet time for Congress to sign off on another multi-trillion-dollar check as part of a fourth rescue bill, as lawmakers must "slow down and be mindful of what we're doing," Sen. John Kennedy said Wednesday.
"I'm not interested in any more of Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi's spending porn, or any other member of Congress, for that matter," the Louisiana Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "We just spent, with the leverage, $4 trillion. We ought to see if it works….that's not Louisiana ditch water we're spending. That's taxpayer money. That's $4,000 billion dollars. We have to pay it back."
At this point, he added, the IRS must do its job to get stimulus checks out to Americans, and unemployment compensation programs "have to do their job too."
Meanwhile, Louisiana is surging as a coronavirus hotspot, with the state seeing a 30% increase of cases in one day and a shortage of ventilators.
"Like everyone else, we're catching hell," Kennedy said. "Louisiana is number two in cases and number three in deaths. Like every other state, we need a lot of things, primarily we need more ICU nurses. Doctors just think they run the healthcare delivery system, it's nurses. Number two, we need more ventilators. Number three, we need our unemployment compensation system not to crash, because if people can't get money to buy food, they're going to go back to work and that'll spread the virus."
And, he added, "we could use a few prayers, like everyone else as well."
Kennedy said he would not criticize anyone, as he feels they are doing the best they can.
"We're using about 30% of our ventilators right now. It's not like we're out, but we worry, like everyone else does, about running out," he said. "We don't want to have to make a decision. Our health care professionals don't [want to decide] who lives and who dies. I think we'll beat this thing if everybody will respect what the scientists tell us."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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