Another Republican Claims Credit For Funding He Voted Against

 

Insurrectionist Arizona Republican crackpot Rep. Paul Gosar joins a long list of fellow nihilists who voted against President Biden's American Rescue Plan (twice!) only to take credit for the relief money that subsequently flowed into his district.  From the lying seditionist's press release:

Representative Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-04) issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision to award $32,000 to the City of Kingman for the Kingman Airport through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

“I am pleased to announce that the City of Kingman will receive this critical funding for economic relief related to operational costs for cleaning and sanitizing the Kingman Airport to combat the spread of COVID-19. This funding is essential to maintaining safe and reliable air service to the community,” said Rep. Gosar.

Kingman Mayor Jen Miles said, “We are grateful for Congressman Gosar’s continued support, and this funding will help with the ever-growing Kingman Municipal Airport operations.”

As Steve Benen notes, Gosar is just doing what his fellow charlatans have always done and are already doing:

President Joe Biden signed the Democrats' Covid relief package on March 11, but it was on March 10 when Republican Sen. Roger Wicker celebrated the American Rescue Plan's beneficial "targeted relief" for restaurants. The Mississippi senator neglected to mention the fact that he voted against the bill that provided the relief.

As regular readers know, he soon had plenty of company. GOP Reps. Madison Cawthorn and Alex Mooney took similar steps in March, touting funds for community health centers in their respective districts, overlooking the inconvenient detail that those health centers wouldn't have received the money if they'd had their way. New York's Nicole Malliotakis pointed to funding in the package as one of her "achievements," despite the fact that she voted against the ARP.

They all assume (perhaps rightly) that their constituents don't follow "Washington politics" and can be gulled into believing these cynical, hypocritical assholes are helping their communities.  Shame on craven local officials for letting them get away with it.  Every local media reporting on these scams should make it abundantly clear that Republicans were against these essential funds before they were for them. Shame on them if they don't!

(Photo:  Gosar caught in another lie/ Jonathan Ernst, AFP, Getty Images)

It's The Infrastructure, Stupid

The folks at Axios have been talking to Standard & Poors and Goldman Sachs about the impact of President Biden's proposed infrastructure bill and the recently- passed American Rescue Plan Act, and it's pretty eye- popping:

Economists are becoming positively giddy about the potential for economic growth this year as President Biden and Congressional Democrats look set to push forward a $3 trillion infrastructure bill.

What we're hearing: "Stimulus helps build the bridge for the recovery to reach the other side, but an investment in infrastructure is the fuel to jump start the economic engine," Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global, says in an email.

• S&P predicts Biden's infrastructure plan will create 2.3 million jobs by 2024, inject $5.7 trillion into the economy — which would be 10 times what was lost during the recession — and raise per-capita income by $2,400.

State of play: Economists at Goldman Sachs again revised up their outlook for growth this year in a Sunday note to clients, predicting real consumption will grow by 9.5% in Q1 and 12.5% in Q2, citing retailer reopenings, the reversal of winter storm effects and a decline in new COVID-19 infections.

• Further, they note that OpenTable restaurant reservations are nearing 70% of normal nationwide and are back above their pre-crisis level in Texas.
• They also anticipate the pace of fiscal support to U.S. consumers will accelerate by $1 trillion on an annualized basis (or 5% of GDP) for March and the second quarter, relative to the previous six months.

This is another game- changing piece of legislation that, should Republicans attempt to block it in the Senate, Democrats should feel good about "ramming through" (i.e., allowing a vote on the Senate floor).  It would have broad support in the country, if not with the Republican sedition caucus which is dedicated to sabotaging Democrats in general and Biden in particular.  Going big will pay big dividends for the Democratic Party, but more importantly for the nation.

Dems Alone Must Own The Relief Bill

 

Help is here — and brighter days lie ahead. pic.twitter.com/HSp8rPBxty

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 10, 2021

While the Biden COVID relief bill is extremely popular, the Biden Administration and Dems need to start a full-court press in the months and years ahead to publicize the benefits the public is getting from the relief bill, and not just the one-time checks. Moreover, since the shameless Republicans are already starting to claim credit for a bill they voted against -- like the dishonorable Sen. Roger Wicker (Seditionist-MS) -- the public needs to be reminded over and over that the relief bill passed without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Use videos of their demagogic language ("socialism", "blue state bailout") and throw it back in their faces especially in the months leading up to the 2022 and 2024 elections. There are plenty of ideas about selling the benefits of the bill, and the administration is already planning a robust campaign to lock in public support. The resources in this bill will give people their lives, their businesses, their public schools, and their health back. It was thanks to the Democrats only

As a reminder, it's being pointed out that the Obama Administration didn't "sell" the 2009 stimulus to the public, which saved the auto industry and stabilized the housing market among other things, and set the stage for 7 years of growth and employment. The same could be said for the Affordable Care Act, which gave affordable health insurance to millions for the first time, and expanded Medicaid. In both cases, the Republicans' dishonest counter messaging gave them the majority in the House, resulting in the sabotage of the rest of Obama's agenda. That can't be allowed to happen again.  Fortunately, it looks like the Democrats have learned their lessons well.

 

A Year Of American Renewal, Thanks To Democrats

 

 

Before we move on too quickly, a little more crowing is in order regarding the passage of the COVID relief and stimulus bill (American Rescue Plan Act), and why it's such an important piece of legislation at any time, but particularly so early in the Biden Administration.  Here are some facts:

The roughly $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which only Democrats supported, spends most of the money on low-income and middle-class Americans and state and local governments, with very little funding going toward companies. The plan is one of the largest federal responses to a downturn Congress has enacted and economists estimate it will boost growth this year to the highest level in decades and reduce the number of Americans living in poverty by a third.  [snip]

“This legislative package likely represents the most effective set of policies for reducing child poverty ever in one bill, especially among Black and Latinx children,” said Indivar Dutta-Gupta, co-executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. “The Biden administration is seeing this more like a wartime mobilization. They’ll deal with any downside risks later on.”

The total numbers are staggering. Cumulatively, the government will hand out $2.2 trillion to workers and families between the relief passed last year and this latest bill, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group. That’s equivalent to what the government spends annually on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined.  [snip]

The Democratic stimulus package also provides significant funding for vaccine distribution and state and local governments. Business and health leaders say getting most Americans vaccinated is key to the economic recovery. But most of the attention on the bill has focused on its overall price tag and the payments that are set to go to about 150 million American households.

The latest stimulus will reduce poverty by a third, lifting nearly 13 million Americans out of it, according to an analysis by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Black Americans, Hispanic Americans and poor families with children are set to benefit the most. Child poverty would be reduced by more than half, the researchers predict.  [snip]

The magnitude of aid, especially combined with last year’s relief, is much greater than the U.S. government has responded to other economic crises. The response to the Great Recession was about $1.8 trillion over several years and the most optimistic estimates are that about 6 million Americans were kept out of poverty in 2009 because of efforts by Congress at the time.

Biden and his top officials have repeatedly said they have learned lessons from the mistakes made during the Great Recession response. This time around they want to go big enough to ensure jobs return swiftly. They want a package that, in the words of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, will get families “talking about it at their dinner tables.”

Though it would seem unnecessary to point out what this bill will mean to millions of Americans, the bad faith two- legged rats (a.k.a., the Republican Party) and their faithful hacks in the media have already started a campaign of lies about the bill.  Therefore, Democrats need to do one other thing they largely failed to do after they passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010:  mount an aggressive political- style public relations campaign that anticipates the Republican disinformation effort and targets the party in general, and vulnerable Representatives and Senators in particular, for their obstruction and opposition to helping Americans during this crisis that their former guy made much worse than it had to be.

This is going to be a year of American renewal, and Democrats can and must claim exclusive rights to that renewal.  Keep up the victory lap!