Biden’s Bailout Bill Doesn’t Get America Back on Track by Sam Graves

Dear Friend,

“Never let a crisis go to waste.”

Those famous words were uttered by an Obama-Biden administration official not long before they jammed through an unneeded, partisan piece of legislation that spent a whole bunch of money we didn’t have. That was in 2009. 50 days into the Biden administration and here we go again.

This week, President Biden signed his “American Rescue Plan” into law. He billed this legislation as a silver bullet to cure America of COVID and get our country back on track—unfortunately, it’s anything but.

Instead of building on the work of the three existing bipartisan COVID-19 relief bills negotiated by President Trump with members of Congress from both political parties, President Biden chose to go it alone. What resulted was predictable. We got a massive $1.9 trillion boondoggle instead of a COVID bill.

This is one of the largest spending bills ever passed by the United States Congress, yet less than 10 percent of it goes toward directly fighting COVID-19. The rest went towards a laundry list of liberal priorities and payoffs, like the billions that went towards arts, humanities, and foreign aid spending. None of this had anything to do with the pandemic and none of this did anything to solve the most difficult challenges facing our country today—how we can work together to reopen small businesses and get our children back in to classrooms full time.

That’s shameful. We can’t keep printing off more money and yelling “because COVID” every time somebody asks “why?” After all, there’s still $1 trillion from previous bills still sitting out there unspent.

Let’s be clear—there are some folks who are in need of what little help this bill provides. There are also many who don’t need it at all. That said, things are improving, and we’ve got to make sure that the temporary help we provide now doesn’t mortally wound us in the future.

We’re more than one year out from the start of the pandemic and cases, deaths and hospitalizations are on the decline. Enough is enough. We have to start working together to really rebuild our country. We need to reopen our small businesses and get our children fully back to school. The science is clear. It’s time we started listening to it.

Sincerely,

Sam Graves