Democrats are using a “sneaky trick” to pass $1.9 trillion in spending that puts red state taxpayers on the hook for fiscal failures of blue states, according to Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
“Iowans are in particular upset about the fact that they will be bailing out blue states that don’t manage their budgets, that have excessive pensions, and my taxpayers who manage their finances quite well will be the ones bailing out these poor blue states,” Ernst told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Tuesday.
That was not the only issue Ernst had with the massive spending package passed solely on Democrat votes in the Senate 50-49.
“A lot of Iowans won’t see the benefit of most of these programs,” Ernst told co-hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “Again, this is a COVID bill, not a farm bill. This was not a manufacturing bill. This is supposed to be a COVID-related bill.”
Ernst noted just “1% of this bill goes to vaccinations,” and the locked-down blue states that scoffed at red states’ progressive reopening plans amid the coronavirus pandemic are going to get bailouts for their economic failings and poor policies.
“We need to be opening our economy,” she said. “We need to be getting moms back to work, open our schools, and this bill does not do that.”
Most of the spending is not even COVID-19 related, either, another sneaky ploy to pass liberal wish-list items, Ernst lamented.
“For heaven sakes, there was 91% of that bill that did not go to supporting COVID-related recovery, so 91% of the bill shouldn’t have passed,” she said. “We really need targeted relief. That’s not what we saw in this $1.9 trillion package.”
Also, the bill was sold to Congress as emergency relief, but a majority of the spending is earmarked for deferrals and future spending, not immediate economic relief.
But, perhaps most egregious is the minority farmer stimulus provision that is racially biased against white farmers, Ernst lamented.
“This was a really sneaky trick to put this in the bill,” Ernst said.
“They are very upset about that,” she continued. “There are a number of programs that will target certain populations, and yet our poor Iowa farmers won’t be able to apply if they are in a certain demographic, and so that is very unfortunate that we have singled out certain farmers and certain areas and not supported all farmers.”
Ernst said Iowans “hate this” provision, which some consider a reparations-like contingency. Democrats have long weighed reparations to Blacks for being held back economically due to slavery more than 100 years ago.
“It is very, very unfortunate that we have gotten to a point right now where we are not only forgiving the loans of certain demographics but paying them an additional 20% on top of that,” she said, adding Maine GOP Sen. “Susan Collins and I had a lengthy discussion about her poor potato farmers in the state of Maine.”
Source: Newmax
