This is a travesty… but apparently, democrats and republicans will never let a crisis go to waste.
Source: Georgette
If you thought the Senate stimulus bill ‘deal’ was a good thing for America, it depends. If you want the federal election process to be determined by democrat operatives roving state to state and using online voting registrations and other tactics to rig ballots… If you think that giving $11 billion to three international ‘development groups,’ mainly in Africa is going to help American workers… And, if you think that slating $350 million for ‘refugee resettlement’ programs is a good way to increase American productivity, then you’ll be happy.
Because that’s what republicans have handed over to democrats to get this ‘deal.’
But, whatever right? As long as we all get a check… who cares?
Earlier this week, it was revealed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s relief package would include $300,000,000 for refugee assistance.
The new bill, approved by the Senate and now headed to the House, includes an additional $50 million on top of Pelosi’s initial $300 million for refugees.
On page 817 of the 880-page bill, the measure calls for “an additional amount for ‘Migration and Refugee Assistance’, $350,000,000, to remain available until expended, to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus.”
It’s unclear why the amount was increased.
Nestled among the 12 titles and 880 pages of the $2.2 trillion “Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020,” approved unanimously by the Senate late March 25, is a paragraph sending $400 million to state governments “to help prepare for the 2020 election.”
The provision’s senatorial proponents promise it will enable state election officials to increase the ability of citizens nationwide “to vote by mail, expand early voting and online registration, and increase the safety of voting in-person by providing additional voting facilities and more poll-workers,” according to a summary prepared by Democratic staff members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
It accounts for a mere 0.018 percent of the overall measure’s $2.2 trillion in federal expenditures, but the provision is “a rare victory” gained by “an unusually intense and coordinated lobbying campaign by some of the major players in the democracy reform movement,” according to its chief media voice, The Fulcrum.
The Fulcrum is published by Issue One, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that grew out of the drive for public funding of congressional campaigns and growing fears among liberal activists that corrupt “dark money is flooding our elections.”
Officially, the $400 million was included due to worries that the CCP virus would mar the November election as millions of Americans wouldn’t vote for fear of being exposed to the deadly disease.
But, as The Fulcrum story and the Democratic summary make clear, much more than health concerns were at work behind the scenes as Congress wrestled in recent weeks with three major coronavirus response measures.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) were the chief advocates on the Senate side. In a March 16 Washington Post op-ed, the duo wrote:
“The best way to ensure that this virus doesn’t keep people from the ballot box is to bring the ballot box to them. We must allow every American the ability to vote by mail.
“And we must expand early voting so that voters who are not able to vote by mail are not exposed to the elevated infection risks of long lines and crowded polling locations.”
[Gag me with a spoon.]
On the House side, a more aggressive package of like-minded election reforms was included by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in her Democratic alternative to the measure approved by the Senate.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) described Pelosi’s proposals as “nothing but a dangerous ploy to federalize elections,” especially a “ballot harvesting” provision allowing “political operatives in every state … to come to a voter’s house to pick up their ballot and deliver it to the polling location.”
Pelosi’s other proposals mandated polling places be within walking distance of public transportation, barred election officials from requiring identification from voters seeking absentee ballots, permitted high school students to be poll watchers, and allowed ballots to be cast from any location.
Catherine Englebrecht, president of Houston-based anti-voting-fraud group True the Vote, told The Epoch Times such reforms “take a blowtorch to election integrity,” adding that she had “held out hope that we wouldn’t see these kinds of exploitive tactics right now. But no. Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Pelosi’s alternative bill stalled, however, and, according to The Fulcrum, “the groups mounting the most aggressive lobbying campaigns—including Common Cause, the Brennan Center for Justice, Unite America, the National Vote at Home Institute and Issue One—soon realized that new federal mandates were a lost cause and focused instead on delivering money to the states.”
Meredith McGehee, Issue One’s executive director, told The Epoch Times on March 26 that “the whole point here is not to be too prescriptive at the federal level,” adding that “if the effort is perceived as being too prescriptive, it will never get past the Senate, whether or not the Republicans are currently in control or down at 47.”
McGehee described Pelosi’s proposals as “the marker bill that the Democrats needed to do,” but “there was always during the past two weeks a discussion on what do we need to do now just to focus first on making sure there are safe and secure elections at the same time these other issues were floating around.”
Those “other issues” will likely stick around because, according to Democratic reformers, another $1.6 billion will be needed in coming months to ensure a safe and healthy November election.
Davis told The Epoch Times on March 26 that the $400 million in the Senate coronavirus bill “is not the top-down nationalized approach the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi wanted in their bill and they tried to push on numerous occasions.”
The Illinois Republican said the Senate bill “means our local election officials are going to get more money to open more polling stations, buy hand sanitizer and put in new hygiene methods, stuff that many rural election officials can’t do now.”
Davis said he is “surprised some of these groups that want to take over and nationalize our elections” aren’t viewing the $2 billion estimate of needed election funds as “a down payment.”
Among the many provisions in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package that appear to have little to do with the immediate crisis at home is a nearly $11 billion pot of money for three international development groups.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) – which the House of Representatives is expected to vote on Friday – includes the funding for the African Development Fund (ADF), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the International Development Association (IDA).
The ADF and the AfDB are two related organizations that help fund development and poverty eradication efforts in Africa, whereas the IDA is a subsidiary of the World Bank that gives to poor countries in general. Combined, they will receive more than $10.8 billion under the CARES Act.
This amount includes $7,286,587,008 for the AfDB, $513,900,000 for the ADF and $3,004,200,000 for the IDA.
…
Controversial appropriations tucked into the coronavirus stimulus package include $25 million for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, with a stipulation that the funds are to help deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. There is no such language connected to the AfDB, ADF or IDA provisions.
The inclusion of these funds comes after a plea from the Center for Global Development (CGD) for the U.S. to include funding for international organizations in its coronavirus relief package, citing the possibility that even after the virus is under control in the United States, it could see a resurgence if there are not strong enough efforts to suppress it worldwide.
“[T]o put it bluntly, the United States will not be safe from this pandemic until the world is safe from this pandemic—without widespread access to a vaccine or countermeasures, cases rebound quickly when quarantines are lifted as has been shown in Singapore and Hong Kong this week,” read a letter the CGD sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., last week.
The funding for these three international organizations was not an 11th-hour addition; it was included in the original Republican version of the coronavirus bill.
The striking $2.2 trillion price tag of the CARES Act, meanwhile, has been more a point of pride for both Republicans and Democrats, considering the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences, than a concerning federal expenditure. But at least one House member has raised the alarm about the amount of spending in the bill.
“This bipartisan deal is a raw deal for the people,” Rep Justin Amash, I-Mich., a former Republican, tweeted Wednesday. “It does far too little for those who need the most help, while providing hundreds of billions in corporate welfare, massively growing government, inhibiting economic adaptation, and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.”
