As a former CoS for the Ways and Mean co-chair, I still love reading appropriations bills. So lets see what's in the Senate GOP's latest coronavirus "stimulus" bill (found here appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…...
First off, there's 80 million "to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, including for necessary expenses related to...prisoners in the custody of the United States Marshals Service" but only if they're held in PRIVATE prisons. Hmmm.
Next, there's $212,985,000 for extra FBI salaries and expenses, and especially to offset lost revenue from sec. 4013 of title 18, that is, "Processing of fingerprint identification records and name checks by FBI." So why the lost revenue? Barr said crime was way up.
Then there's the FBI appropriation of $1.75 billion to rebuild the FBI headquarters, also known as Trump's personal ask to prevent competition with his hotel across the street.
Another $36.4 million and $200 million for the AFT and Federal Bureau of Prisons respectively, presumably so Trump can commandeer them for his private militia/domestic terror program.
I'm curious as to why an earthly pandemic requires $181,650,000 in funds for "Space Operations." Do we suspect the coronavirus is really, really novel? Will Trump soon start calling it the Mars Virus?
There's an additional $91.7 million for "Safety, Security, and Mission Services" providing for modification of those federal contracts relating to such services approved under the original stimulus bill.
With operations/maintenance appropriations of $882M (Army), $458M (Navy), $135.5M(Marines), and $969M (AF), is this is actually a Defense bill? But the army and navy are prohibited under posse comitatus from engaging w/in the US except under a declared nat'l emergency, right?
Speaking of Defense, we have $1.78 BILLION for ‘‘Defense Working Capital Funds’’. Since these are further split between Army, Navy, and AF, again, what's the domestic application of these funds?
Then there's $1.128B for a ‘‘Defense Industrial Base Resiliency Fund—Army’’ as well as $4.664B for a similar ‘‘Defense Industrial Base Resiliency Fund—Navy and Marine Corps’’. Apparently these guys are also concerned about these mysterious new "funds": taxpayer.net/national-secur…
I need to feed my family, but will continue afterwards. I'm only on page 33 of 175.
So I'm back and we're now into the specific appropriations, that is, "here's this money, but you can only spend it on this." First up, AH–64 Apache Block IIIB helicopters from Boeing, to the tune of $283M. That alone would pay the rent for 225,000 families for a month.
Next, $375M for "Weapons and Tracked Combat Vehicles", Army’’, but rather than just any tracked combat vehicle, it's limited to the Stryker DVHA1, presumably for General Dynamics Land Systems, to whom they just last month awarded the contract to build the vehicles.
And here's another $1.068B for Boeing and its P-8 Poseidon aircraft. No wonder the feds withdrew from Seattle; Portland has nothing other than IPAs, shoes, and lousy Oracle software.
Ah, and here's a small earmark for the Senate Majority Leader himself: $41.4M for LCS OTH Missiles. While the Norwegian-designed missiles are built in Arizona, the launchers come from Raytheon’s plant in Louisville, KY. Are we using missiles now to defeat the virus?
Just in case the coronavirus attacks the Navy's fleet, the Senate GOP bill sets aside another $2.21B for ‘‘Shipbuilding and Conversion." So maybe they're building more hospital ships? The ones they currently possess have been put to such good use thus far.
On to the Air Force, we have 2.056B, which can only be used to purchase F–35A, C–130J, and A-10 aircraft. An amount that could bump up the unemployment insurance supplement from $200 to $600/wk for 5.1 million Americans.
Shocking that at page 38 (of 175) that I've only addressed 12.834 Billion out of a 1 Trillion appropriations bill. So maybe this is all just peanuts, nothing to see here stuff. But when the bill only appropriates 2.2B for Rental Assistance, I'm not sure why they even bothered.
And what does "modernizing" the West Wing, to the tune of $377M have to do with coronavirus? Is this Melania's slush fund for her Rose Garden renovation?
My kid now needs his mom/caregiver, and so I'll attack this again in the morning. It's really pretty depressing that the Senate GOP care so little for the people of this country, and see this as an opportunity to shift more and more money to the military-industrial complex.
Another day reviewing the Senate GOP appropriations which are purportedly for fighting Covid and providing economic relief to needy Americans—which, from the contents of this bill thus far—appear to be mostly comprised of defense contractors.
Defense contractors in red states, that is. We have Dallas-based Lockheed Missile Defense, which is getting an additional $243,270,000 for its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery.
$800M for the National Guard is okay, right? But what if it's specifically for the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account, which "is primarily used to recapitalize equipment in Rapid Global Mobility, Air Superiority, Personnel Recovery, and Special Operations arenas"?
Another $595M for "Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide" which can only be spent on various "missile defense" programs, specifically "Hypersonic Defense" systems. What does this have to do with the pandemic? defensenews.com/land/2020/02/0…
In April, 2019, the IRS published its plan to modernize its business systems, at the cost of $2.3-2.6B over five years. Yet here's a $2B appropriation for this plan which also "facilitates remote performance of critical Internal Revenue Service functions." Seriously, $2B?
A footnote to the last tweet: "Amounts made available under this heading in this Act may be transferred to "Operations Support" upon prior notification to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate." So, it's really just an IRS slush fund.
So the TSA gets $88M for sanitizing airports, but then another $50M for "credential authentication technology units" and $70M for "computed tomography technologies" used to scan carry-on baggage. Are they looking for the virus in luggage now?
So FEMA gets only $31M in additional funds for "operations and support", including salaries and expenses, and yet will receive $119M for "enhancements" to information technology and facilities.
Firefighters (which include EMTs) receive an additional $930M (an appropriate appropriation), and yet $1.6B is earmarked for "customs and immigration inspection"—with the only restriction that funds "shall only be used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection."
While 1.6B is appropriated to Indian Health Services, the restrictions and requirements are far more onerous than any placed upon defense contractors, including, w/in 14 days, "a detailed spend plan of anticipated uses of funds, by bureau, program, and activity,"...
... a report on the status of balances of funds from the last stimulus bill, and updates on spending to Congress EVERY 14 days. Seriously, the Senate GOP expect tribes, some of the hardest hit by Covid, to jump through hoops not required of any other recipient.
In response to Ivanka Trump's "find something new" imperative, there's a whopping $500M for job training, and an additional $150M for youth training, as long as such training does not require programs to offer reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.
For a group of politicians who have time and again hyped on how Covid shut-downs are more dangerous than the virus due to increased suicide and domestic violence, they offer a pitiful $50M and $65M, respectively, for these issues.
Hey, here's 10M for individuals with developmental disabilities. Oh, sorry, read that wrong. It's for programs involved in the advocacy and protection of DD individuals, not for providing services to DD individuals themselves.
As noted previously, the bill includes more than $12B in weapons acquisition, and yet provides $6B "for activities to plan, prepare for, promote, distribute, administer, monitor, and track coronavirus vaccines to ensure broad-based distribution, access, and vaccine coverage."
So I'm halfway through (page 87) and taking another break. I'll probably read through the rest of it and pull out the most egregious provisions, rather than make this thread completely untenable.
