A Billion Here, A Billion There, and Soon You’re Talking about Real Money
Chapter Two.
This is the second of a series of articles dissecting the COVID19 Relief Bill, giving my take on who is benefiting and what the impact is on the American taxpayer. When last we left our intrepid and courageous legislators, they had just awarded $66 billion to federal employees eligible for government employee union membership to handle the vicissitudes of having to deal with closed schools, unpredictable schedules and closures, care for family members, and similar traumas not inflicted on the other seven million federal employees, and certainly never experienced by the other 329 million Americans.
Now we see $73 billion given to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education for critical tasks in directly combatting the effects of the pandemic. This includes money for contact tracing, which requires being able to find the patient in the first place. That cannot be done for the three thousand to six thousand people admitted to the US through an open Southwest border, where, according to a Homeland Security source, 15-25% are COVID-positive. In addition to other strange discoveries about the virus, it appears that crossing the Southwest border transforms the disease into one that cannot be spread.
CDC gets a carve-out of $300M to administer vaccines to racial and ethnic minorities and rural populations, with no explanation. This is a case where following the science can help, because our bodies make Vitamin D from sunlight, which is absorbed by darker skin pigments known as melanin before it can penetrate the body and stimulate Vitamin D production. Why isn’t that a headline? And how does living farther than average from one’s neighbors make one more vulnerable to a virus?
There’s $3.25 billion to support the National Stockpile, which seems strange. The popular narrative has it that the National Stockpile was in perfect shape the day Trump took office, and that he did nothing with it, resulting in it being empty when he left office. I never studied quantum physics or quantum voodoo, so I’m ill-equipped to follow the logic.
A microscopic $22.4 billion is used to create a Public Health Slush Emergency Fund for more contact tracing and reimbursement of lost income due to the pandemic, (I belong to the school of thought that the lost income was largely a result of governments’ reaction to the pandemic rather than the pandemic itself), and more benefits to people with dark skin or who live far from neighbors. There’s more than $19B to manufacture and buy vaccines, which means the current administration is hiding its light under a bushel. There was alleged to be nothing available when the new administration took office, and less than two months later it has designed, built, tested, staffed and burned in highly-specialized manufacturing capability for incredibly fragile end-products. That would have taken me most of a year with an unlimited budget and staff, but I’m not a politician.
There’s another $3B to reimburse health care providers and hospitals for health care costs and lost revenue. I recall that the revenue was lost when hospitals were told not to treat anyone and all elective surgery (except abortions, which as a matter of choice are by definition elective), and thousands of nurses, physicians and others were laid off until we “bent the curve.” By the time orders were given resulting in the ludicrous situation of unemployed health care professionals from small hospitals not being allowed to help the overwhelmed staffs of large hospitals, we knew that almost no youngsters died, or even became particularly ill, due to the virus. Government is now taking credit for fixing a problem it caused by itself through failing to follow science. We have the privilege of paying for it.
Another $4.25B goes to preventive and other services in mental health. No known mental health professional has ever provided any evidence that prevention efforts have any effect. Then again, the money is being divided by omniscient politicians lecturing us to “follow the science” while the scientists disagree vehemently with the politicians.
The Administration for Community Living receives $100M to address abuse, neglect, and exploitation of the elderly, including adult protective service and long-term care ombudsman activities. If only we’d known before that elder abuse is caused by a virus, perhaps we could have done something about it. Is there another interpretation of this passage?
We start approaching the significant money when we come to the Department of Education. There is $82B for education, which has been effectively withheld from almost all American children not in private schools since March 2020. This is in addition to the money provided last year to education under the CARES Act, $16.5B total, plus $14B made available for post-secondary education. To recover from the heavy burden of receiving those funds, teachers unions have insisted that their members cannot yet safely return to school. The global number of teachers being infected by students is only slightly higher than the number of pterodactyl sightings in Iceland, but that is only anecdotal information, and a randomized test still needs to be conducted. Pending that, a further $54.8B in burden will be forced on public schools, and the Bureau of Indian Education, with the highest per-student spending and the worst record in the US, will have its budget effectively doubled. And, there’s another $22.7B for higher education funding.
I have not added the education numbers because I do not wish to go on suicide watch.
Better ventilation in schools is good. Providing better access to telecommunications is OK, but there is a lot of $$ that goes to "ed" that really goes to tech sector.