The Democrats' proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill contains billions of dollars for items that have nothing to do with the disease, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said Monday.
"Less than 10% of the money in this massive $1.9 trillion bill is for health-related items," the Louisiana Republican said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Start with the biggest item, $350 billion to bail out failed states. California announced a surplus of $10 billion and they're going to get probably tens more billions from this bill. New York state, we had an amendment to require New York to report the nursing home deaths data that Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo has been covering up, a major scandal in New York. Do you know all Democrats, including Democrats from New York, voted against that Cuomo has to disclose nursing home death data to get tens of billions of dollars for New York? This is in the bill."
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour also has nothing to do with COVID-19 relief, and in fact, small businesses could have an even harder time coming back if wages are raised, Scalise said. The bill also allows over $100 billion to go to schools, but 95% of the money can't be spent until 2022, he added.
"Do you really want to wait until 2022 to start having your kid go back to school?" he said. "This is crazy ... this bill should be about helping kids get back in school. Instead, it's about bowing to the teachers' unions who don't want kids to be back in school when all the science and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] director said get the kids back in the classroom."
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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