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Senator Highlights Pelosi’s ‘Absurd’ Coronavirus Bill That Is ‘Unrelated To The Crisis’

   DailyWire.com
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, speaks outside of her office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, March 23, 2020. Pelosi said House Democrats will introduce their version of the stimulus package to respond to the coronavirus, offering an alternative to the bill currently under discussion in the Senate.
Andrew Harnik/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) highlighted “absurd provisions” that are “unrelated to the crisis at hand” that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) added to the coronavirus stimulus bill, which is needed to protect the economy and American families.

“Families and businesses need help now to survive the China virus pandemic,” Cotton tweeted. “But @SpeakerPelosi walked away from negotiations to write her own bill, full of absurd provisions completely unrelated to the crisis at hand.”

Cotton then laid out 12 things that “Speaker Pelosi is demanding while Americans suffer.”

Cotton’s list included:

  1. Corporate pay statistics by race and race statistics for all corporate boards at companies receiving assistance.
  2. Bailing out all current debt of postal service
  3. Required early voting
  4. Required same day voter registration
  5. 10k bailout for student loans
  6. For companies accepting assistance, 1/3 of board members must be chosen by workers
  7. Provisions on official time for union collective bargaining
  8. Full offset of airline emissions by 2025
  9. Greenhouse gas statistics for individual flights
  10. Retirement plans for community newspaper employees
  11. $15 minimum wage at companies receiving assistance
  12. Permanent paid leave at companies receiving assistance

“The Democrats see an opportunity in this crisis,” Cotton concluded. “Not to help the American people, but to hold an emergency relief bill hostage until they get their radical wish list. How long will Arkansans and Americans across the country have to wait?”

Yesterday, Democrats blocked a $1.8 trillion stimulus bill, which included $1,200 payments to millions of Americans and numerous other benefits, from being passed after Pelosi allegedly blew up the deal, according to Republicans and various reports.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) unloaded on Pelosi during a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, saying that the Senate was doing just fine until her “intervention.”

“The American people are watching this spectacle,” McConnell said. “I’m told the futures market is down 5%. I’m also told that that’s when trading stops. So the notion that we have time to play games here with the American economy and the American people is utterly absurd.”

“So I want to explain what just happened,” McConnell continued. “Our good friends on the other side would not have been disadvantaged one bit if this vote had succeeded because it would have required potentially 30 more hours of discussion, during which these seemingly endless negotiations could go on as long as they would like.”

“Now the build up to this, so everybody fully understands, is that we had a high level of bipartisanship in five different working groups over the last 48 hours where members who were participating were reaching agreement,” McConnell continued. “And then all of a sudden the Democratic leader and the Speaker of the House shows up, and we’re back to square one. So, we’re fiddling here, fiddling with the emotions of the American people, fiddling with the markets, fiddling with our health care. The American people expect us to act tomorrow. And I want everybody to fully understand if we aren’t able to act tomorrow, it will be because of our colleagues on the other side continuing to dicker when the country expects us to come together and address this problem.”

“Now I changed my vote which gives me the opportunity to move to reconsider at a later time. That’s all I can do in the face of this obstruction. Look, I can understand obstruction when you’re trying to achieve something,” McConnell continued. “This obstruction achieves nothing. Nothing whatsoever other than prevent us from getting into a position where there are literally 30 more hours that they could use to continue to dicker. So at a time when the country is crying out for bipartisanship and cooperation — and we saw that over the last 48 hours when regular members of Senate, not in the leadership office, not in the speaker’s office for goodness sakes, she’s the Speaker of the House, not the speaker of the Senate. We don’t have one. We were doing just fine until that intervention.”

“So I want the American people to fully understand what’s going on here,” McConnell continued. “The markets are already reacting to this outrageous nonsense. We have an obligation to the American people to deal with this emergency and to deal with it tomorrow. And if we don’t, I want everybody to fully understand you’ve seen everybody who’s on record, I’ve conspicuously avoided trying to turn this into any kind of partisan effort for two days. But it’s pretty clear what’s going on here.”

“Hopefully some adults will show up on the other side of the room and understand the gravity of the situation and the need to act before the markets go down further and the American people become even more depressed about our lack of ability to come together under the most extraordinary circumstances,” McConnell continued. “We’ve never been confronted with anything like this before. It’s totally different. And we’re not immune to it in terms of the public health risk. The coronavirus has hit the Senate today as well. We have five members, five members in self-quarantine. Everybody understands the emergency, particularly when it hits close to home. It’s not just back in our states, but right here in the Senate. So I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, step up, step up. Help us reach an agreement so we can do what needs to be done for the American people no later than tomorrow.”

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