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REPORT: Dems’ $1.9T Bill Ignores GOP Focus on Crushing Virus, Creating Jobs

February 19, 2021 — Blog    — Coronavirus Bulletin    — Markup    — Press Releases   

WASHINGTON—Democrats are not only failing to crush the virus and create jobs in their partisan push to pass a $1.9 trillion bill, they also won’t address major shortcomings by leaving out GOP-led fixes that Americans need and deserve. Ways and Means Republicans’ newly released “Minority Views” report highlights these problems and our proposed solutions—that were tragically left out of the bill.

Despite its price tag, Democrats’ $1.9 trillion rescue plan does little to rescue people from COVID or joblessness, as it…

  • Fails to direct and target funding for COVID-19 diagnostics and testing
  • Forces Main Street businesses to remain closed by discouraging work
  • Neglects children in need
  • Leaves families to fend for themselves in educating their children amidst school closures
  • Tosses funding to states without requiring a plan to reopen schools
  • Sidesteps vaccine distribution to seniors in rural and underserved areas
  • Passes on improving vital mental health programs and Substance Use Disorder treatment services
  • Ignores common sense liability protections for nursing homes and front-line health care workers
  • Cuts Medicare payments for frontline health care providers, instead lobbing that money at programs who can’t account for money Congress already gave them
  • Pays no mind to inaccurate nursing home data about deaths from COVID amidst troubling reports of underreporting, such as in New York
  • Subsidizes abortion despite the opposition of a majority of Americans
  • Creates an unnecessary multi-billion-dollar subsidy for health care coverage on top of existing options for those losing employer-sponsored insurance
  • Crushes jobs with red tape for Main Street businesses and one-size-fits-all paycheck requirements
  • Prevents economic impact payments to families who are losing their jobs because of the Biden Administration’s unilateral actions
  • Denies aid to small businesses who desperately need it
  • Denies certainty for families relying on the $2,000 per child tax credit, which could be slashed in half in coming years
  • Relegates victims of domestic violence to having to deal with their abuser to access their economic impact payments
  • Bails out union- and employer-run pension plans that were in trouble long before the pandemic, and only to the benefit of a small fraction of those affected
  • Adds another $45 billion to the deficit and sends us hurtling towards a staggering fiscal cliff in 2022.

This is just a sampling of the problems within this committee’s jurisdiction. Republicans offered amendments to fix these problems. Yet Democrats pushed forward without these amendments.

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