House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., speaks at the 2019 Democratic women’s leadership forum, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Congress passed a $2 trillion dollar virus relief bill and President Donald Trump signed it. The idea behind it was was to give people and businesses who had to comply with the “stay at home” orders and couldn’t work money to cover that time and for businesses to be able to hold onto their employees.
But that’s not how Democrats saw it. Senate Republicans thought they essentially had a deal with Senate Democrats until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came back and busted it all up, delaying the bill and relief to Americans for a week. Democrats saw it as an opportunity to try to get all their pet programs through, hang it if it harmed Americans in the process by the delay.
But despite the fact that a lot of those efforts to stuff the bill failed, Democrats still view this pandemic as an opportunity to reshape America to fit their vision and they haven’t given up the effort.
Tom Elliott of Grabien has a great supercut of them laying it all out.
SUPERCUT!
Dems: Coronavirus an Opportunity to Create Socialist Utopia pic.twitter.com/V5YSi3XeaK
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 4, 2020
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asks Pelosi what needs to be done in the next package. She runs off a long list of things, most of which have nothing at all to do with the virus or the main idea of helping people who were put out of work. “The list goes on and on,’ she says, even talking about the internet and the US postal service debt.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says yes, this is the opportunity to put in “green” measures.
Some even talk about how the federal government should completely take over the response or nationalize industries to the effort.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) says yes, we need to restructure healthcare [didn’t they do that already?] and California Governor Gavin Newsom says it’s the opportunity to “reshape how we do business and how we govern.” You even hear Joe Biden talking about raising the minimum wage and AOC talking about guaranteed housing. Just exactly what does that have to do with all this?
It’s a list that’s mostly not to address the virus, but to finish off on that “fundamental transformation” of our society that Barack Obama promised us.
Never let a crisis go to waste.