thebigp

Before you read this---add these as they were on TV---$4.5M spray bobcat urine on alcoholic rats. $1.5m- walk lizzards on treadmills. $1.3m-to see if people will eat ground up bugs
The outgoing president described the groundbreaking legislation as “a disgrace” and suggested he would not immediately sign off on aid for millions of Americans.
BY RACHEL SIEGEL, JOSH DAWSEY AND MIKE DEBONIS, THE WASHINGTON POST DEC. 22, 2020UPDATED: 7 PM
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a statement about Iran at the White House in Washington D.C. in January. On Tuesday, the outgoing president hinted that he wouldn't sign a c****av***s relief bill that could send many Americans $600 stimulus checks. Credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Trump on Tuesday night asked Congress to amend the nearly $900 billion stimulus and spending bill passed by the Senate just one day before, describing the legislation as “a disgrace” and suggesting he would not immediately sign off on aid for millions of Americans.
In a video posted to Twitter, Trump called on Congress to increase the “ridiculously low” $600 stimulus checks to $2,000 and outlined a list of provisions in the final legislation that he described as “wasteful spending and much more.” He did not mention that the $600 stimulus check idea came from his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin.
“I am also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a C***D relief package, and maybe that administration will be me,” Trump said.
The Texas Tribune.
The video landed like a sonic boom in Washington. His own aides were stunned. Congressional aides were stunned. And the implications for what happens next could be severe. If he refuses to sign the bill, the government will shut down on Dec. 29. The $900 billion in emergency economic aid will be frozen and the race for the two Senate seats in Georgia could also be upended.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., quickly responded to the Twitter post by saying congressional Democrats would enthusiastically return to the Capitol to approve the $2,000 stimulus checks.
“Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks,” she posted on Twitter Tuesday night after Trump’s message. “At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!”
Senate Republicans had been the most resistant to the larger checks, and they control the Senate.
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The 5,593-page bipartisan bill was introduced Monday afternoon and then passed the House and Senate later in the evening. It passed Congress with broad bipartisan support, clearing the Senate by a 92-6 margin. Republicans had insisted on keeping the economic relief portion at less than $1 trillion and larger checks would have pushed the final tally higher.
Trump’s aides had made positive comments about the bill lawmakers passed, but Trump had largely stayed out of negotiations. Last week, he had complained to some aides that he thought the $600 stimulus checks were too low and wanted them raised to $1,200 or $2,000, but aides had convinced him not to intervene, saying it could scuttle the whole package.
Some aides were stunned that Trump weighed in the way he did after his economic team had publicly praised the bill.
But administration officials had negotiated the bill with lawmakers in the final days without explicitly securing Trump’s approval, aides said. He had largely been distracted with overturning the results of the p**********l e******n.
The Texas Tribune
Trump had long wanted to do more than $600 in checks and kept asking aides why they couldn’t agree to a bigger number, an official said.
He released the video Tuesday after a number of his aides, including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, were already out of town.
“So dumb,” one administration official said. “So, so dumb.”
As the c****av***s p******c began to move rapidly through the United States in March, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion spending bill to try to limit the economic impact. Many of that law’s measures expired over the course of the year, and the recent spike in new c****av***s cases — and the end of the November e******n — sparked a bipartisan coalition to seek a new bill. The measure that passed Congress on Monday night promised $900 billion in new assistance, including the $600 stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment aid for 11 weeks, small-business assistance and a range of other measures.
The Washington D.C. pork inside the new C****-** stimulus bill—G21,B16,S9
by ELLIE BUFKIN, Sinclair Broadcast Group
Wednesday, December 23rd 2020
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure with the new C****-** bill which passed both the House and Senate before heading to the president’s desk.Democrats and many Republicans were hopeful that the president would sign the bill and get the ball rolling on $600 individual payments for most Americans, but the president said in no uncertain terms on Tuesday night that the bill in its current form is a no-go.President Trump reiterated his previous position that $600 was not nearly enough to help people, demanding instead $2000 individual payments. But mostly, the president railed against the other payments in the bill, many of which meant billions of dollars to foreign nations amid a p******c and economic crisis at home in the U.S.“A few months ago, Congress started negotiations on a new package to get urgently needed help to the American people. It’s taken forever,” Trump said from the White House. “However, the bill they are now planning to send back to my desk is much different than anticipated. It really is a disgrace.”
“It’s called the C***D Relief Bill, but it has almost nothing to do with C***D,” Trump said. “This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia, $134 million to Burma, $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment. $25 million for democracy and g****r programs in Pakistan, $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. $40 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, which is not even open for business. $1 billion for the Smithsonian and an additional $154 million for the National Gallery of Art. Likewise, these facilities are essentially not open.”
Trump is not alone in his grievances. After Congress passed the bill and people had the opportunity to peruse its wide-ranging list of contents, many expressed their displeasure in being made to wait months for p******c relief only to be awarded a small check and a plan to export billions of dollars overseas.
But this is certainly not the first time Congress has used crisis and clever wording to gain the approval of their opposite party, the people, and the president. It is far more difficult in Congress to gain the support needed for bills on individual, so they attach other projects, often at great expense, to the hottest bill in the line-up. Nothing could be more red-hot than getting help to hurting Americans. The shorthand for the additional items on the bill are referred to as “pork,” the part of the bill that you aren’t supposed to see until after it passes, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy,” Pelosi said in 2010. She later defended her remark, saying, “We get a bill. We go to conference or we ping-pong it, and then you see what the final product is. However, I stand by what I said there. When people see what is in the bill, they will like it. And they will.”
Most critics of the current relief bill see that as exactly what happened in this instance, in which they were given just six hours to review the contents of the much-needed C***D relief to take a v**e. Defenders of the bill say that it’s important to remember that C****-** relief was always meant only as a small part of the pie. The C***D relief itself held a $900 billion price tag and was joined into a further $1.4 trillion omnibus bill that laid out federal appropriations for the coming year.
But critics still say that they would not have supported an appropriations bill that contained multiple projects supported largely by Democrats in the House if they had been able to read the proposal or if it weren’t attached to C****-** relief.
Economic turbulence is expected to continue in 2021 as “life as normal” seems to have been postponed indefinitely. It seems tricky to some to support the creation of two new expensive museums, a Women's History Museum and an American Latino Museum, or to support programs like, “a Statement Of Policy Regarding The Succession Or Reincarnation Of The Dalai Lama.” After Trump aired his frustration with the bill, he asked Congress to return to the drawing board and bring back something with more support for Americans in crisis, and fewer of the programs he did not like. Speaker Pelosi has not commented on whether Democrats would be willing to eliminate on any of the programs that troubled the president.
POLITICS
Congress agrees to $900 billion C***d stimulus deal after months of failed negotiations—G21,B16,S9
PUBLISHED SUN, DEC 20 20205:39 PM ESTUPDATED MON, DEC 21 20202:00 PM EST
Jacob Pramuk@JACOBPRAMUK--CNBC
KEY POINTS
• Congress reached a deal on a $900 billion c****av***s relief package, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
• Lawmakers will now move to v**e on the proposal, along with a full-year government spending bill.
• Millions of Americans have awaited aid for months as Congress failed to agree on another plan to boost a health-care system and economy buckling under the weight of the p******c.
“At long last, we have the bipartisan breakthrough the country has needed,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor Sunday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the plan a “package that delivers urgently needed funds to save the lives and livelihoods of the American people as the v***s accelerates.” They called the plan inadequate and noted they would soon push for more relief spending after President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20.
Lawmakers plan to pass the relief and funding bill on Monday.
To avoid a government shutdown that would have started at 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday, Congress approved a one-day spending measure to keep the lights on until 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday. President Donald Trump signed that bill late Sunday, according to a tweet from White House spokesman Judd Deere.
The deal on one of the largest rescue bills in U.S. history follows months of sniping on Capitol Hill over how best to fight a once-in-a-century crisis. Democrats moved quickly to pass trillions of dollars more in assistance only two months after Congress passed the more than $2 trillion CARES Act in March. The GOP at first downplayed the need for more aid, then in the summer embraced a more limited approach than Democrats desired.
A new round of help cannot come soon enough for the millions of Americans who have tried to scrape together enough money to afford food and housing during sustained public health restrictions. The coming help will not reverse the closures of small businesses across the country or the poverty and hunger that spread for months while Congress failed to act.
“The American people have a great deal to celebrate in this legislation. But of course, the agreement we reached is far from perfect,” Schumer said.
What’s in the bill
The Democrats said it would put $284 billion into Paycheck Protection Program small business loans, and include funds for loans from small and minority-owned lenders. It would direct another $20 billion to small business grants and $15 billion to live event venues.
It would also add a $300 federal unemployment supplement and temporarily keep in place p******c-era programs that expanded unemployment insurance eligibility. It was not immediately clear how long each of those measures would last.
If the jobless benefits expansion expires the day after Christmas, 12 million people would lose unemployment insurance.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
The measure was also set to put critical funding into the distribution of the two FDA-approved C****-** v*****es. Schumer said the bill would direct $30 billion into “procurement and distribution” of v*****es.
Health-care workers and top government officials have started to receive shots, and widespread inoculation in the coming months will help the world to emerge from the p******c’s shadow.
The rescue package was also set to send relief to hospitals, many of which have struggled to keep up with a flood of C***d patients. It also would put $82 billion into schools and colleges, according to Pelosi and Schumer, and would expand Pell Grants.
The plan directs $25 billion into rental assistance and extends a federal eviction moratorium for an unspecified amount of time, the Democrats said.
The measure aims to strengthen the low-income housing, earned income and child tax credits. It also would put $13 billion into enhanced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
The plan includes $45 billion for t***sportation, including $15 billion for airline payroll assistance.
The deal came after a last-second fight over a Republican-backed provision that would have restricted the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers. Lawmakers eventually reached a deal to wind down lending facilities created by the CARES Act at the end of the year, repurpose more than $400 billion left over in the programs and bar the creation of identical provisions in the future.
The deal comes too late for the nearly 8 million people estimated to have fallen into poverty since June. Many in Congress say the proposal will not go nearly far enough to address the scope of the health and economic crises.
Progressives and some Republicans have pushed for larger direct payments and retroactive federal unemployment payments. A $600 weekly supplement that buoyed millions of jobless Americans in the early months of the p******c expired over the summer, and it took Congress months to agree to reinstate it.
Schumer stressed that Democrats would push for more relief in the new year. Their ability to approve another bill will be shaped by the two Georgia Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, which will determine whether the GOP keeps control of the chamber.
In a statement, Biden said the $900 billion plan “provides critical temporary support” but “is just the beginning.”
“Immediately, starting in the new year, C