Excuses

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, after enactment of five bipartisan COVID relief bills last year totaling $4 trillion in assistance for healthcare workers, businesses, schools, testing, and vaccines, with over $1 trillion in already appropriated funds still unspent, with an unprecedented level of monetary stimulus from the Fed already in the pipeline with no end in sight, with massive pent-up demand and an economy poised for full recovery, with the success of Operation Warp Speed delivering multiple safe and effective vaccines in record time, with literally millions of Americans benefiting from the mass distribution of those vaccines every single day, with all of these heroic efforts to defeat this virus already in place, why is it that Democrats in Congress are so determined at all costs to ram through this hyperpartisan $2 trillion spending spree with zero bipartisan support?

The answer is that they are exploiting this pandemic as an excuse:

An excuse to force passage of this budget-busting monstrosity, 90 percent of which is totally unrelated to COVID-19:

An excuse to bail out mismanaged State and local governments for liabilities unrelated to COVID.

An excuse to use taxpayer funds to fund Planned Parenthood.

An excuse to send stimulus checks to prisoners and illegal immigrants.

An excuse to expand the welfare state and pay people not to work.

In sum, an excuse to advance an unrelated liberal agenda Democrats call the ``most progressive bill in American history'' that will lead to huge tax increases.

I urge all my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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