“Pelosi’s bill promises school districts $225B, but only $5B, or 2%, would go to making schools safer by improving air quality or installing sinks and other hygiene upgrades.
The rest goes to a teachers’-union protection plan.
The rest goes to a teachers’-union protection plan.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1313603853216931841
The bill allocates $417 billion to state and local governments, with no strings. This is a lost opportunity to rescue cities that are turning into ghost towns because employees fear the virus and are working remotely.
When office buildings, convention centers, railroad terminals and other workplaces are empty, the businesses around them fail. Retailers, shoe shines, food trucks and restaurants have no customers.
In Manhattan and St. Paul-Minneapolis, only about 10 percent of office workers are back on site, worse than anywhere else in the nation.
In Pelosi’s bill, the $600 billion-plus allocated to cities, states and school districts — a staggering amount equivalent to the nation’s entire defense budget — would be consumed plugging budget holes and be gone at the end of a year.
The bill allocates $120 billion in grants for restaurants. New York City needs this help, because half its restaurants are on the brink of closing in the next six months, taking 160,000 jobs with them.
Unfortunately, the funding is saddled with unfair, and possibly unconstitutional, preferences for minority- and women-owned businesses. Right now, everyone needs help.
The House bill spends some money wisely — $200M for a vaccine-awareness campaign, $20M to upgrade the CDC’s disease early alert system and $500M for a nursing strike force to respond fast when a nursing home is hit with COVID-19.
But these important items are getting millions of dollars, while the politically cynical provisions get billions. For example, $5 billion for community-development block grants that the bill labels “flexible resources.” In other words: walking-around money for local politicians.
With our cities dying, employees afraid to return to their offices and millions out of work, stimulus money shouldn’t be thrown around recklessly. A big chunk of this money should go for permanent improvements to virus-proof our workplaces and schools.
The Senate should demand these changes before passing the bill.
Finally, Pelosi needs to play it straight. Using the pandemic to slip in controversial voting changes for 2020 doesn’t pass the smell test.”
nypost.com/2020/10/06/nan…
Finally, Pelosi needs to play it straight. Using the pandemic to slip in controversial voting changes for 2020 doesn’t pass the smell test.”
nypost.com/2020/10/06/nan…
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