Carney: Democrats’ Covid Bill Includes $121 Billion of Long-Term Pork
The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion spending packaged is billed as pandemic relief legislation, but it contains over $120 billion of spending stretching far beyond the present crisis.
A bill tailored to address the pandemic and its economic fallout would focus on funding for health care, capital improvements to schools and government institutions, and aid to those who have lost work and income. Even more importantly, the spending would be narrowly focused on the immediate future because that is when the economy is likely to be in need of stimulus and relief.
That’s not this bill. At least 20 provisions of the bill authorize spending going out to the year 2025, including nearly $10 billion for homeowner assistance and $5 billion for homelessness prevention. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gets $50 billion that can be spent over the next four years.
The point is not that these programs are not worth supporting or do not need more funds. The point is that funding in an emergency relief bill should be spent on emergency relief, not long-term budget priorities.
A tiny fraction of the programs might need a few years of additional funding so that inspector generals and oversight bodies can look into how the emergency funds were spent after the fact. Although that money could also be authorized through the normal budget process.
But what excuse could there be for authorizing $7.2 billion for the “Emergency Connectictivity Fund” through 2030? This is a handout to big telecommunications companies who will get paid by the government to build wifi and internet connections in U.S. homes. The provision has been applauded by AT&T, of course. And maybe wiring more American homes with wifi and broadband is a good idea. But this is not covid relief funding.
All told I count $121 billion of spending allowed after 2024, the latest reasonable date for something to count as related to the pandemic.
Racial Inequality in Unemployment Got Worse In Biden’s First Month
The gap between black and white unemployment worsened in the first full month of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Unemployment dipped in the U.S. in February, the first full month of the Biden presidency, and the economy added far more jobs than expected.
But the recovery was uneven. While unemployment fell among Asians dipped slightly for whites and Hispanics, it rose for blacks, according to data released Friday.
The unemployment rate for black Americans rose from 9.2 percent in January to 9.9 percent in February. That contrasts with a tick down from 5.7 percent to 5.6 percent for whites, a dip from 8.6 to 8.5 among Hispanics, and a decline from 6.6 to 5.1 percent for Asians.
The widening gap is even starker when gender is included. The unemployment rate for black men jumped from 9.4 percent to 10.2 percent in February. For white men it fell from 5.5 percent to 5.3 percent.
Before the pandemic struck. the black-white employment gap had narrowed to its slimmest on record under President Trump.
The unemployment ratio had averaged around 2 to 1 or so for decades, meaning the black unemployment rate is typically twice the white unemployment rate. In good times, the unemployment rate of whites and blacks fell but the gap tended to remain. And in bad times, the unemployment rate for whites and black rose, but black unemployment typically remained around twice that of white employment.
That changed in the Trump presidency when the black unemployment rate fell to just 161 percent of the white unemployment rate. That was up to 177 percent in February, still low by historic standards but well above where it was the month befor
Democrats Tie Amnesty to Labor Giveaway to Agriculture Employers
The Democrat-led Farm Workforce Modernization Act 0f 2021 offers a flood of cheap labor in agriculture and provides a pathway to citizenship to 1.5 million illegal farm workers.
GOP support for the bill would be a suicide pact, Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA, told Breitbart News.
“It would be a ridiculous short-term view of their own personal self-interest — they should be looking five years out, 10 years out, but they’re looking at tomorrow and the 2022 election,” she said. “They will be accepting the end of two-party government,” she added
So far, the bill’s lone GOP cosponsor is Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), who owns orchards in Washington state.
In contrast, a similar 2019 bill won support from more than 34 GOP legislators, including Newhouse, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), and Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH).
Eight of the 34 supporters in 2019 did not return to Congress in 2021, including Colorado’s Rep. Scott Tipton, who was defeated in a primary by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
Only two Democrats are listed as cosponsors of the bill with Newhouse, California Democrats Jimmy Panetta and Jim Costa.
The bill is structured as a giveaway to a wide variety of food-industry employers — and it even includes a measure that would cut the wages paid to the next wave of foreign farmworkers who arrive with H-2A work visas.
According to a joint statement from Newhouse and Rep Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the pro-migration immigration lawyer who chairs the House’s subcommittee on immigration:
American agriculture is desperately in need of a legal, reliable workforce. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is a solution – negotiated in good faith by agriculture groups, labor representatives, and Members on both sides of the aisle – that will do just that. As one of only a few farmers in Congress, I understand the invaluable contributions our producers and farmworkers make to our nation’s unparalleled agriculture industry … We must act now to provide certainty to farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers across the country.
Teresa Romero, president of the pro-illegal immigrant organization United Farm Workers, said:
This bipartisan bill would give farm workers and growers what they say they most need and want. [Illegal] Farm workers with work histories would immediately get legal status and win emancipation from pervasive fear so they can be free women and men. Growers would immediately get a legal and stable workforce.
Democrats see the legislation as a pro-immigration bill. A March 3 statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejoyced:
Today is a happy and historic day, as the Democratic House re-introduces with great pride … the Farm Workforce Modernization Act – ensuring that the immigrants who make America more American can continue to contribute to and enrich our nation … These landmark bills are a testament to this truth: that immigrants are the constant reinvigoration of our nation.
Farm employers are currently able to import an unlimited number of H-2A temporary workers each year. In 2020, employers imported more than 200,000 one-year seasonal H-2As workers, including some skilled machinery operators from South Africa.
Current law also looks away from employers who hire illegal migrants, often via subcontractors. Roughly one million illegals are estimated to work at least part-time in the agriculture sector.
This huge replacement workforce has pushed many Americans out of the agriculture sector, lowered wages, reduced investment in machinery, and reduced spending in many towns.
The Democrats’ amnesty bill would supercharge the population shift from rural areas to towns, said Jenks.
The population shift would include many now-illegal farmworkers, who would move with their families to towns as soon as they get amnesty, she said. The process would first convert the illegals to “Certified Agriculture Workers,” who could buy citizenship by working at sub-par wages for the agriculture sector.
Once existing workers are naturalized, they will flee to better-paid jobs in the cities, she said. The farm companies would then replace their current illegal workforce with many new H-2A workers, at wages below the average wages paid in the rest of the economy. These new workers can then be naturalized, creating a constant cycle.
The proposed Workforce Modernization Act allows farm employers to offer green cards to 40,000 workers — plus their families each year. The dangled offer of citizenship for perhaps 200,000 foreign workers, spouses, and kids each year would encourage more poor foreigners to take the H-2A jobs in place of Americans.
Foreign workers would also be cheaper for agribusinesses because the bill would disconnect H-2A wages from the national economy, roll back housing requirements, and also provide federal funds to help house seasonal migrant workers.
The bill also creates a new category of visa workers who can switch jobs between agriculture employers. Workers in the “Portable H-2A Program” would be able to compete directly against Americans in the agriculture sector. The program would start out with 10,000 workers.
The media accepts CEO claims that the guest-worker programs are a fix for a US worker shortage.
But the evidence shows CEOs use the programs to secede from the US labor market, esp. at professional top & the unpleasant-to-manage bottom.#H2A, #H1B https://t.co/INemIvKCzq— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 17, 2021
The government-provided foreign labor force would devastate rural towns, Jenks told Breitbart News:
NC’s Carlson: ‘Professional Class’ Democrats, Media Don’t Track Illegal Immigration Because It ‘Means Cheaper, Low-End Labor for Them’
Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson speculated on the reasons why Democrats, including President Joe Biden and Biden’s allies in the mainstream media, do not track illegal immigration.
Carlson argued there were benefits for that group within the so-called “professional class” from getting an influx of illegal immigrants.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Ten days before the last election, the 2020 election, a reporter for The Texas Tribune came across a very strange sight in Starr County, Texas. Starr County sits on the border right across from Mexico. It’s one of the poorest places in the country. Not a lot of people visit Starr County, Texas. But this reporter did and he watched as more than 70 vehicles with Trump flags drove in parade formation from the little town of Roma, Texas to Rio Grande City.
“All aboard the Trump train,” read one sign.
It was a convoy and was organized by a man called Raul Reyes, even Reyes couldn’t believe the turnout. “I was expecting 15 to 20 cars max,” he told the reporter. And the reason he wasn’t expecting more cars is because Starr County is not exactly a Republican stronghold. In fact, just four years before in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in Starr County, Texas by 60 points. That’s definitive.
But things changed and they changed fast. In the span of just four years, Starr County, Texas moved from deep blue to almost red. Donald Trump finished within just five points of Joe Biden. That’s a swing of over 50 points.
And the numbers are even more dramatic in nearby Zapata County. Donald Trump lost Zapata County in 2016 by 33 points, but last November, he easily beat Joe Biden. These are big changes. And you’re seeing them all along the Rio Grande Valley, the southern border with Mexico.
Now to the geniuses looking at these numbers in Washington trying to figure out what they mean, the most amazing thing, the things that leaps out of them immediately is that Starr and Zapata Counties are overwhelmingly Hispanic. Starr County is 96 percent Hispanic, Zapata is 85 percent.
So how could Hispanics support Donald Trump in numbers like that? They must be QAnon people.
And not only were those two counties non-white, they are very poor, legitimately, as we said, some of the poorest places in the United States. Nearly a third of the residents of Starr County, Texas live in poverty, the median household income in both those counties, Starr and Zapata, is under $35,000.00 a year, but they are voting for Trump.
What the hell is going on?
Well, a lot of things are going on probably, but uncontrolled illegal immigration, definitely is one of them, probably the main one. And that’s completely baffling to people in D.C.
If you’re a Yale educated bureaucrat or a nonprofit executive living in Bethesda, of course, you see everything through the lens of identity politics, you’ve been told to do that. And needless to say, you obey, you always obey.
Most illegal aliens are Hispanic, so you assume that most Hispanics support illegal immigration. That’s just how you think. The problem is, you’re an idiot. You have no idea what you’re talking about, but you have no clue how ignorant you are. How could you know, you never leave Bethesda.
Congressman Henry Cuellar is a Democrat, but he doesn’t live in Bethesda. He lives in Texas. Cuellar represents both Starr and Zapata Counties. Cuellar sees what’s happening. He can’t ignore it.
On Saturday, he told FOX News that his constituents are being overwhelmed by an influx of migrants from Latin America, and the Biden administration is doing nothing to stop it. In fact, they’re lying about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. HENRY CUELLAR (D-TX): It might have started under Trump, but when you’re the President, you own the situation, whether it’s a success or not a success, it’s going to own that.
I think in February, we’re going to get about 100,000. And again, I don’t care what we call it, but I can tell you this, those numbers of people that are being released, they are purposely withholding that information. They’ve been told not to withhold that information.
I now know that they’re bringing people from McAllen over to Laredo, processing them in Laredo, and they’re going to release them in my community.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Those numbers of people being released says Henry Cuellar, the Biden administration is purposely withholding that information. Now, why would they do that?
How bad is it? Well, again, this is an elected Democrat admitting that he has no idea how many people are flooding into his community every day because the Biden administration is hiding that information.
He is supposed to be representing this country, but he has no idea how many of these people compete for his constituents for jobs. He has no clue how many of them are criminals. He has no idea how many of them have COVID.
No one knows the situation there is that out of control. And it’s not just Henry Cuellar who is upset about it.
Another Democrat from Texas, State Senator Chuy Hinojosa from McAllen has charged the Biden administration is encouraging illegal aliens to come which obviously, they are. Quote, “It’s gotten worse,” Hinojosa said, “I don’t think quite frankly the Biden administration was aware of what’s happening on the ground here, which you can understand because they’re just coming in and trying to get people up to speed with what’s happening. But I don’t think they were aware that there were that many coming across. The Border Patrol is overwhelmed, they’re throwing up their hands because they don’t know what to do.”
Now, that’s not a problem if you’re Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it’s cool. But if you actually live there, and you’re poor, it’s a huge problem, and you shouldn’t be surprised by this.
Our policymakers realized a long time ago that they could simply hide most of the relevant data on illegal immigration, and no one would bother to look into it.
Case in point is the total number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, it’s been 11 million officially for decades. Everybody repeats that. They keep repeating that number, even when all available evidence contradicted that number. That number is a complete lie.
There is some research out there, some good research, totally nonpartisan, and the best research suggests that there are at least twice that number of people living here illegally, and possibly many more, quite possibly more than 30 million.
But journalists and the politicians they protect don’t get to the bottom of because it doesn’t bother them, because they’re all part of one class. They’re the professional class. They run the Democratic Party, and more illegal immigration means cheaper, low-end labor for them.
It doesn’t really matter what effect it has on the country. It doesn’t really matter what more crowding does to the natural environment. We’ve got about 100 million more people living in the United States than we had 30 years ago. What does that do to the environment? No one cares.
Who does it hurt? They don’t care.
Of course, if you are being hurt, you do care. If you’re living in poverty in the Rio Grande Valley, none of this is an abstraction. The actual numbers matter very much to you.
FOX’s Casey Stegall recently did what most journalists are refusing to do, he went down to the border to try to understand, on foot, with a camera, the scope of the illegal immigration surge that has intensified since Joe Biden became President.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY STEGALL, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The wave of migrants currently flooding America’s southern border runs the gamut from entire families to children all alone. And now once again, larger packs traveling together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huge groups are coming in, because they know that they’re going to be let go.
STEGALL (voice over): U.S. Border Patrol agents say it’s not at all uncommon to encounter clusters of 20, 30, 50, sometimes even groups of more than a hundred migrants wandering the desert and surrendering, as the overall apprehension numbers keep ticking up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are between 700 and a thousand daily.
STEGALL (voice over): Which translates into a shortage of detention beds and space, even as additional temporary overflow facilities are brought online.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARLSON: This is obviously humanitarian crisis, mostly for Americans, but not just for Americans, for the migrants themselves.
Whatever happened to “those kids in cages”? All those unaccompanied minors? Maybe some of them don’t have their parents with them. Nobody cares anymore.
It’s hypocrisy. Yes. But it’s so in your face, you have to conclude the hypocrisy itself is the point. They humiliate you and wear you down by ignoring their own previous statements and blowing right past you with their new agenda.
As Congressman Cuellar pointed out, all of this is intentional from the way they’re hiding the data to the complete 180 on the child overflow facilities.
People living in Starr and Zapata Counties voted the way they did for a reason. Is it surprising to you that they are being punished for it now? It shouldn’t be.
But this is a bigger story than just South Texas. It’s not just affecting border towns in the Rio Grande Valley. What you’re seeing is an attack on an entire social class, an attack on working people, the ones who’ve been hurt the most by COVID, the ones who saw their lives destroyed after a year of incoherent health mandates from incompetents posing as experts.
And just to rub it in, in case you missed the point, the administration is demanding that American citizens, unless you’re Gavin Newsom, but the rest, remain under Corona law forever.
Meanwhile, foreign nationals living here illegally can do essentially whatever they want.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Officials with the City of Brownsville, Texas report at least 108 migrants tested positive for COVID since the end of January, more than six percent of everyone they screen.
A city spokesperson tells FOX News, they don’t have the authority to detain those people and prevent them from getting on buses and traveling elsewhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So the illegal immigrants, some infected with coronavirus get on a bus and just take off. Who knows where they’re going? No one knows where they’re going. No one is checking. That would be racism.
Meanwhile, a mom in Ohio dares to watch her son’s football game sitting alone in the stands, and for doing that she gets Tasered, wrestled to the ground, arrested all for not wearing an obedience mask.
It’s awful on every level and a functioning media would expose it. But instead our media create diversion so that you won’t notice it is happening in the first place.
Watch the race lady on MSNBC, Harvard educated, but totally oppressed tell you that you have no moral right to worry about COVID.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: You know who the absolute worst is? Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Yes, he’s a repeat offender. He’s deflecting criticism by dishing out anti-immigrant xenophobia.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): The Biden administration was releasing illegal immigrants — illegal immigrants into our communities who had COVID. The Biden administration was spreading COVID in South Texas yesterday because of their lack of constraint of testing and quarantining people who had come across the border illegally.
REID: So for that absurdly racist claim, Governor Abbott is the absolute worst, for the second time this week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “An absurdly racist claim,” says the race lady from Harvard. So taking precautions against COVID is racist.
Just the other day, they were telling us exactly the opposite. Tomorrow, they will tell us something completely different again. They don’t mean any of it. Maybe we should ignore them.
What actually matters is keeping our country from falling apart, and right now, effectively, we have no southern border. That’s a much bigger problem than COVID.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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