House Republican Whip Steve Scalise Friday said he agrees that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's $3 trillion coronavirus bill is "dead on arrival," but part of the issue is that she never consulted Republicans or the president on the bill.
"She didn't take this seriously and wanted to just throw out a big socialist spending bill and a grab bag of all kinds of crazy things like paying illegals, doing bailouts to states that were already failed before COVID-19, just to throw $500 billion to states that already wrecked their economy," the Louisiana Republican said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
Instead, he said, it would be smart to help businesses reopen and allow families to "get back out and get their chance at the American dream again."
"People know how to go out and be around other people again in a safe way and start getting the economy going again," said Scalise. "Look at some of the studies that have come out recently. Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and others talking about the negative impact on people's health of shutting in." Scalise also spoke out against Democrats' calls to allow the House to vote remotely over the next weeks.
"This is a dangerous precedent," he said. "You are talking about changing over 200 years of voting precedent … [Pelosi] is changing the rules today so that literally just 20 members of Congress can constitute a quorum. That's crazy. ... she is now passing the rule that literally has Democrats turning their voting card over to Nancy Pelosi. How scary of a thought is that? I'm not turning my voting card over to Nancy Pelosi."
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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