>> There is mind-numbingly stupid waste in the coronavirus relief bill, which of course,
is attached to the government spending bill. But the way to really think about this is it's
one piece of legislation 5000 pages which left quite a bit of room for lawmakers to
slip in all sorts of provisions that do not prioritize the best interests of Americans,
but rather the best interests of lobbyists who have been persuading them to focus on things
that benefit the military industrial complex, and things of that nature.
So I wanted to share a few of those provisions with you. This is by all means it's not a complete
comprehensive list of all the issues with this bill. But I do wanna just point some highlights
that I came across as I was reading about it. So one of the things that stood out was
$33 million toward so called economic policy toward Venezuela.
Now it's being referred to as the Economic Support Fund. Let me give
you the exact wording from the bill where it says
Venezuela of the funds appropriated by this act under the heading Economic Support Fund,
not less than $33 million shall be made available for democracy programs in Venezuela.
A country that we have attempted to orchestrate coups in several times
in recent years and luckily failed in doing. But it seems like no, we need to spend some
additional taxpayer money on meddling in the internal affairs of Venezuela and its government.
It's absolutely shameful, especially when you consider that there's been no hazard
pay in this bill for frontline medical workers or frontline workers, period.
The Direct checks to Americans is far less than what they received under the Cares Act instead of
$1200, it's only $600. The unemployment benefits are only $300 per week for 11 weeks
as opposed to $600 per week which we received under the Cares Act, and the original plan was
for the unemployment benefits to last for about 16 weeks, and that was then scaled back to 11 weeks.
So it really does show you where the priorities are here. By the way, there's more than $19
billion set aside for the military to buy more weapons.
Didn't Congress just pass a military spending? So why is there another $19 billion
added on in government spending in this particular bill, it makes no sense.
It's known in the bill this is the wording that I wanna share with you. The money is being allocated
for construction, procurement, production, modification and modernization of aircraft
equipment including ordinance spare parts and accessories therefore specialized equipment,
expansion of public and private plants including the land necessary therefore and such lands and
interest therein may be acquired and construction, Prosecuted there on prior to approval of title.
So if you just keep reading, essentially what this is gonna be used for is more
machinery for the military, which again makes no sense to me,
especially when you consider the fact that the Congress just passed the latest round of
military spending and every time they increase the budget for the military.
There was also $500 million allocated for Israel's missile defense system. And
this i thought was New spending, but the fact of the matter is, it's just another installment
of the $38 Billion that the Obama administration agreed to give Israel back in 2016. This was
part of the military Aid negotiation that Obama engaged in with Benjamin Netanyahu.
And so the United States previously agreed to give Israel $500 million
to develop missile defence systems as part of the 2016 memorandum of understanding,
which covered a 10 year period and $30 billion in military aid to Israel.
So like I get that that was already negotiated during the Obama administration.
But can we like put a hold on that? Like, can we especially at a time when more and more Americans
are going deeper and deeper into poverty, I know I keep sharing this statistic with you guys,
but it's important. 8 million additional Americans have gone into poverty. Since the summer,
this pandemic is destroying people's lives, people are desperate, they're suffering.
Maybe we put a pause, Just a quick pause on this kind of stuff,
right? Military spending for other countries, and why don't we focus our resources on actually
doing what's right for the American people but no that's not what we see in this bill.
It's absolutely disgusting. I have more for you, but Jake, why don't you jump in?
>> Yeah, so I'm $38 billion for Israel we have, but direct checks to you guys for 12 $100 No,
we don't have that. We gotta cut that in half. What happened to America first? All
of a sudden Republicans hate America first. They're like, well, no, no, of course.
No that's real Americans? No, multinational corporations? Yes.
Other countries that we care about for for political reasons,
yes. But you guys, no, no, no, no, no. We don't care about you, Americans.
So in that Horrett had a good article about that. So yes, it's part of an earlier package and deal.
Notice, by the way, that deal was not undone by Trump. Every other deal was undone, Obama deal,
but not that one. And but On top of that, they said But look, it's also good because it gives
over $2 billion to private religious schools in America. Wait, what's good about that?
That's not good at all. So we don't have money for direct payments, but we're gonna pay for private
religious schools. They say, well, it's gonna help Orthodox Jews indoctrinate their fellow Jews
into this particular kind of strand of Judaism. Yeah, nope, nope. I don't see why that's good.
And then Muslims can indoctrinate Muslims in America and Christians can indoctrinate
Christians, and they're all private schools and you want to take your taxpayer money.
And we're going to funnel it to them. Where's the upside? The only good news out of that whole
part of the bill is at least they allocated some money to protecting synagogues and other
religious Institutions and buildings, because anti semitism is massively on the rise in America.
And so those things need to be protected- how many synagogues need to get attacked before we
go and spend money protecting them? So that part of the bill I love. Anyway, so overall back to the
weapons and the submarines and all the different things that we're buying instead of health care.
Look, Eisenhower Republican president said this,
every dollar we spend on missiles and ships Is a $1 taken out of the mouths of your kids
out of their health out of their education of their well being and literally the food on their
table. And every day our corporate republicans and corporate democrats make a deal to funnel more
money to their corporate donors and say, when it comes to you, so we just now we ran out of money.
What a shame how that turned out. When finally came to the voters and we're all out of money,
sorry. >>
Yeah, no, I mean and there are so many absurd Elements of this bill,
right? I mean, we've talked about the $1.4 billion that's been allocated for Trump's border wall.
Why are we doing that? Why are we doing that right now? Trump is a lame duck president.
Why are they even including the funding for this nonsense wall which has been
a complete and utter failure? >> As Lee Fong tweeted about,
if you own a race horse, the coronavirus stimulus legislation has a tax break for you.
And that's an addition to the double-dip taxes in regard to the PPP money that
some businesses are taking. That money could end up being forgiven loans for businesses.
It's tax free, it's not considered taxable income, and then on top of that, based on
the way this bill is written, businesses could then deduct the amount of money that
they use from the PPP funds as business deductions.
So it's a double dip tax break. In addition to a third one, which is the three Martini lunch tax
break 100% of restaurant bills can be deducted for from taxes, and Trump genuinely believes
that that's a way to increase business for restaurants during COVID. And Lee Fang also
tweeted that the PPP bailout money for small business originally covered payroll and rent.
The new stimulus legislation now says PPP can cover cloud computing services,
which potentially means the government is now picking up the tab for automation. Remember
the whole thing about PPP was, It was meant to be a way to yes, protect small businesses from
feeling during this incredibly difficult time,
but it was also meant to persuade these businesses to keep employees on payroll.
So algorithms and robots automation, not really interested in protecting that.
Definitely interested in protecting the livelihoods of actual living breathing humans.
That's what this was supposed to be about. But this is why it was such an issue
and AOC pointed this out several times yesterday when it was clear the bill was 5000 pages,
and Congress had access to it about two hours before they needed to vote on it.
Come on, so is any member of Congress really gonna know what's in this bill? Of course not.
Now it did pass in the House, it did pass in the Senate, now we're waiting for Trump to sign it.
>> Yeah, so I remember when they did not have enough time in their opinion to
look at the final final version of Obama care after a year of looking at all the
details and the Republicans still cry about it to this day, nobody got a choose to read it,
nobody got the chance to read the final version even though we all know exact;y what was in it.
Now as they say, you don't know anything in there we stuck snuck things in there
about race horses and cloud computing, etc. Now you got two to read, you can read it,
who cares. And other than progressives who can make an issue out of it nobody.
All of a sudden republicans not where's the two hours, nothing.
>> Well, to be fair there were Republicans who actually ended up voting against the legislation
and a few of them did speak out about how they didn't have enough time to read it.
Believe it or not, Senator Ted Cruz was livid about the fact that they
only had about two hours to read the actual language in the bill before voting on it.
So credit where credit is due, although obviously I have deep
issues with Senator Cruz. But he's right on this. >> No, Anna, I love that you brought that up.
We have a perspective, but we care deeply about facts. So if Ted Cruz is registering a
complaint that this is thrust upon them in a way that they cannot read it, thank you.
That is a principle position, I might not agree with any of your other positions,
but that is correct and I'm thrilled to give you credit for it. I wish you were right more often,
okay? So that's number one, number two the part that you didn't mention in the bill
is the Grey Poupon Tax relief.
So the two limos pull up to one another and they ask for Grey Poupon you gotta make sure that you
can't tax Grey Poupon. If you're doing like French mustard that's fine, but we're gonna tax them,
but not the Poupon. Okay, so that's not actually in the bill but would you be surprised if it was?
But seriously, last thing guys, and this one is real Race horses, special tax break for the
incredibly wealthy people that own race horses. Okay, now, let's get where they're holding a derby
where there's tons and tons of race horses and racehorse owners. Right, Kentucky.
Where's Mitch McConnell from?
Kentucky, what a coincidence, he didn't have money for your direct cheques.
He didn't have money for your healthcare,
but he had money for his donors' race horses. >> He had money for the Peaky Blinders.
>> Yeah. >> Sorry.
>> Yes, that's Peaky Blinders reference, beats my 1980s Grey Poupon commercial reference.
>> Okay, but at least we now they could take this bill and the horses ASID wrote in on and shove it.