President Biden has challenged those who oppose the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion bill disingenuously dubbed “COVID relief,” or the more deceitful “American Rescue Plan.”
“What would they have me cut?” he asks. Challenge accepted.
Even The Washington Post editorial board thinks the spending is too much and misdirected: ” concerns about the bill’s costs are growing across the political spectrum.”
With COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths decreasing, with vaccines promised to be widely available to the general public by July, and with possible herd immunity coming soon, the best stimulus to the economy would be to open up businesses, allowing people to return to work while practicing health and safety measures.
Many who received money from the government the last stimulus go-round banked the checks and spent little or none of it. The Post editorial also notes that money targeted to state and local governments (virtually all run by Democrats) don’t need it. It references Moody’s Analytics examination of state finances, which “shows that 31 states have enough money ‘to fully absorb the economic stress of COVID-19’ without substantial budget cuts or tax increases.”