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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