This may just be my favorite video of the day, as Senator Kennedy shreds both Pelosi and Schumer for trying to exploit this coronavirus crisis in order to push their left-wing agenda in the stimulus bill:
This is really something you should watch, as Kennedy is quite entertaining with his pull-no-punches Louisiana style.
But in case you can’t, here’s a partial transcript:
HEMMER: Is two trillion dollars the right answer?
KENNEDY: We don’t know because we can’t get the damn thing passed! What Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer are doing here is breathtakingly irresponsible. Now they’re my friends and I respect them, but they ought to hide their heads in a bag. This bill is going to help people through direct payments and unemployment insurance. It’s going to help small business. Yes it’s going to help large corporations – it’s not a slush fund – because they employ Americans too. …
When we finish it’ll be somewhere in the range of 1.8 and 2 trillion dollars. Do we know if it will work? No, I think it will. But we’ve got to pass the bill in order to see if it works.
HEMMER: What Democrats are arguing is that it’s frontloaded for corporations.
KENNEDY: That’s nonsense! And they know better. Let me tell you what they’re talking about. They’re saying there’s a five hundred billion dollar slush fund. That’s nonsense. It’s called an Exchange Stabilization Fund. It’s going to be administered by the federal reserve. They will loan money to all large companies, all comers, if they don’t qualify for the small business provisions. They’re not grants, they’re not bailouts. They are loans. They will be collateralized. In many cases the federal government will demand stock in the companies. The companies can’t use the money for paybacks or to raise executive’s pay.
And you know why my Democratic friends know all that? Because they helped negotiate it. And then at the last minute Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer decided ‘well, this would be a good time to hold the American people hostage and let’s try and get the Green New Deal.’
They oughta hide their heads in a bag.
There’s much more in the video if you want to watch it, but this is the gist. I love how Kennedy explains the details that Pelosi and Schumer are trying to distort to give themselves cover and really just calls them out on the carpet.
As far as the 2 trillion dollar stimulus bill itself, reports are that it may pass tonight. They are apparently very close and we’ll keep you updated on what happens with it.