How Crisis Legislation Can Have "Unintended" Consequences

Little of the Democratic Party's wish list made in into the COVID-10 Relief Bill. That's a relief in itself. But we will hear of these again, I'm sure. The devil in is in the details, and Democrats will in the future try to sneak progressive and undemocratic issues into bills that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. 

On Friday, the House passed the massive $2 trillion-plus coronavirus relief package (click the link to read the entire bill) which the Senate had passed on Wednesday. There is way too much in this bill which is just pork, though the main features are certainly needed.

There’s a lot in those 880 pages, and much of it is problematic: The bill is neither targeted and temporary, nor directed exclusively at the coronavirus—as scholars at The Heritage Foundation and its president, Kay C. James, have explained.

Before the bill made it through the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., temporarily derailed it by insisting that any relief bill include a left-wing wish list unrelated to the ongoing pandemic and the economic slowdown that it’s causing.

Pelosi succeeded in delaying the relief package by several days, but she failed to capitalize on what her No. 2 lieutenant, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., called a “tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

Can you imagine that she wanted the following items included in the bill which have nothing to do with the current crisis, and should not be in any bill, by the way? 

• Mandated “diversity” on corporate boards and in banks.
• Required airlines to disclose and reduce emissions.
• Mandated that states allow voting by mail.
• Increased union bargaining power.
• Expanded tax credits for wind and solar power.
• Prohibiting universities from disclosing the citizenship status of their students.
• Provided a bailout for some private pensions.
• Federal takeover of state elections.

In the end, Pelosi supported the bill wholeheartedly.

But despite her self-proclaimed success in turning the Senate bill upside down, progressives in her party are not happy with it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., thinks that the relief package favors the businesses that employ the vast majority of Americans. She had threatened to delay the bill’s passage.

Even before this relief package becomes law, politicians on both sides of the aisle were already calling for another one to follow, so expect Pelosi and the progressives to try again to make the wishes on their wish list come true.