National review
Why six Senate Republicans voted against COVID Relief Bill
Congress on Monday night approved a $ 900 billion coronavirus aid package after months of political networking, with the Senate voting almost unanimously for the measure, with the exception of six Republican senators. The bill of 5,593 pages passed well in House 359-53 before it was approved by Senate 92-6. The six votes against the measure came from Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rand Paul (Ky.) Rick Scott (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ted Cruz (Texas). six senators were most critical of the financial and physical scope of the bill. Paul called the bill a “spending monstrosity” that said “so-called conservatives” who vote for the measure would not be better than Social Democrats. “When you vote to pass without free money, you lose your soul and you forever abandon all semblance of moral or fiscal integrity,” he said, “instead he helped open the economy and trim wasteful budget spending to stop creating additional debt for.” In a similar statement, Johnson said in a statement that the government “does not have an unlimited checking account.” “We need to spend federal dollars – money we borrow from future generations – more carefully and set limits on how much we mortgage our children’s future.” He made it clear, while supporting the sweeping CARES law in the spring that rapid, massive action was needed to “prevent an economic breakdown”, that this time he wanted to take a more targeted approach, in September he proposed a smaller billing cost of 600 billion Scott also pushed for the “massive bill for all-inclusive spending that mortgages the future of our children and grandchildren.”> We must help Americans and small businesses in need, but we can not continue to operate this way. attached important program to a massive bill for the omnibus that mortgages our children and grandchildren’s future, therefore I can not support this bill.pic.twitter.com/poShVDXzHb >> – Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) December 21, 2020He said in a tweet that he would not support the bill and added in a statement that “Washington does not seem to understand that new spending today will be paid for by increased federal debt and results in a tax island kning on families along the way. “The easy way is simply to go when Congress continues to harm future generations of Americans, but I will not be a part of it,” he said. and that financial relief will finally reach many who really need it, “he was critical of the ‘dysfunction’ of the process.” The dysfunction in Washington, DC was in full swing when Congress combined covid relief with a massive omnibus spending three months past the deadline and into the current fiscal year, Johnson said. “This monster was 5,593 pages long and passed just nine hours after the Senate first saw it.” “I simply could not support this dysfunction, so I voted no,” he said. Crus and Lee also pushed back against legislators being given only hours to read thousands of pages of legislation. In response to a tweet by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., NY), in which the progressive legislator lamented that he had to vote on the bill without being given enough time to review it, Cruz agreed that the process is “absurd.” “It’s absurd to have a $ 2.5 trillion expense bill negotiated in secret and then – hours later – demand an up-and-down vote on a bill that no one has had time to read,” Cruz tweeted. @AOC is right. >> It’s ABSURD to have a $ 2.5 trillion expense bill negotiated in secret and then – hours later – demand an up-and-down vote on a bill that no one has had time to read. CongressIsBroken https://t.co/EQp8BfRBHj >> – Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 21, 2020Lee repeated this criticism and posted a video on Twitter where he showed how long it took just to print the bill: three minutes for just those first 100 pages of the massive bill. “Because of the length, it is impossible for anyone to have the opportunity to read it until we vote,” Lee said in the video. “And I’m pretty sure this has been put together by a very small handful of congressmen and their staffs and that 98% of congressmen in both political parties are excluded in both houses.” “This process, through which members of Congress are urged to blindly postpone legislation that is being negotiated in complete secrecy by four of their colleagues, must end,” he said. I got it just moments ago and will probably be asked to vote on it late tonight. It is 5593 pages long. I know there are some good things in it. I’m just as sure there are bad things in it. pic.twitter.com/SoWXnEWYfV >> – Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 21, 2020Cruz and Blackburn also criticized some of the $ 1.4 trillion funding areas that COVID legislation included. Cruz said the bill “promotes the interests of the radical left, special interests and clog lobbyists, with funding going to expand the authority for more H-2B visas for foreign workers while an almost record number of Americans remain unemployed.[.]”It also sets the stage” for Democrats to implement the “Green New Deal” by asserting a “need” to meet the power needs of the United States through clean, renewable energy sources without emissions, he says. While Blackburn acknowledged that the legislation had a number of positive effects, including the development and distribution of vaccines, aid to schools and aid to small businesses, she said it cost too much and included a number of measures she could not support. support nearly $ 2.4 trillion in spending that will make the recovery even more difficult, she said in a statement. “I have serious problems with provisions contained in the 5,593-page bill, such as extended visas, Pell grants for prisoners and households with illegal aliens who have financial consequences. For these reasons, I voted against approving this law.”