From Mitt Romney to Rand Paul, quite a number of oleaginous Republicans are opposing President Donald Trump’s push for bigger $2,000 stimulus checks.
These Republicans have “expressed concerns that $2,000 checks would cost the government too much money. Increasing the original $600 direct payments would mean the government would have to borrow another $464 billion.”
Has Rand Paul lost it? He says,
“I think giving money to people, though, who are already working—look, my kids are working and don’t need a check. They’re not rich, but they don’t need a check. And most working Americans don’t need a check right now,” he said.
“It’s a really foolish, eggheaded, left-wing, socialist idea to pass out free money to people,” Paul went on. “So I part ways with the president on giving people free money.”
It’s when politicians point to their kids as exemplars of ordinary working stiffs—that the gag reflex kicks in.
As to “free money”: The money is the people’s money returned to its rightful owners. You, sir, are getting free money. Politicians, paid out of taxes, are thieves–never wealth creators, but, rather, wealth consumers–and worse, parasites.
The Bill squanders minted money overseas and stateside, such as on authorizing “a Smithsonian Women’s History Museum and a National Museum of the American Latino.” Foreign aid, of course, being a government-to-government grant, seldom helps anyone but the corrupt bureaucrats in charge of its dispersal.
Here is what’s in the “$2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government funding bill“:
- $4 billion for New York’s MTA as part of bailouts for mass-transit systems.
- $15 billion earmarked toward grant programs for live entertainment venues such as Broadway.
- $7 billion toward expanding broadband access.
- $1.4 billion for a construction of a wall on the southern US border.
- A new law saying that violating copyright laws with unauthorized online streaming will become a felony punishable by five years in prison for first offenses and 10 years for repeat offenses. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) pushed the provision.
- A rule saying the US Postal Service can no longer deliver e-cigarettes.
- $500 million earmarked for Israeli defense purchases, including to equip the Iron Dome missile defense system.
- $250 million over five years for Palestinian economic aid, which was pushed by New York Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey.
- $2.5 million for “Internet freedom programs in closed societies”
- $10 million for “gender programs” meant to help women get education and start businesses in Pakistan.
To their credit, Trumpian Republicans—Senators Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Susan Collins, David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler and Deb Fischer—have distanced themselves from the inappropriate objections, coming from their camp, to money for desperate Americans whose livelihoods have been destroyed by state response to COVID.
However, other Republican senators—John Cornyn, James Inhofe, Martha Blackburn, Pat Toomey, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney—have demonstrated a corporate, Beltway sensibility, as detached as that of the Democrats.
Most ludicrous is that these Republicans still believe there’s a case to be made for “small government.” Have they looked at the debt clock? Do they think the American State will ever again be small; can ever be shrunk?
The Small-Government ship has sailed and some Republicans don’t even know it.
