Fox Business host Stuart Varney said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request that Congress fund a $3 trillion economic relief bill put forth by Democrats this week is the latest example of the party practicing “vote buying.”
“With deep humanity, the speaker says it is designed for the opening of our economy safely and soon,” Varney said on Wednesday. “Soon? If you want to open the economy and get people back to work, you do not offer a big incentive to stay home, but that’s exactly what the Pelosi plan does.”
The measure provides $1 trillion to state and local governments to assist them during a loss of tax revenue as a result of the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus.
The bill also would grant $175 billion to pay for rent, mortgages, utilities, and other housing costs for people struggling to do so on their own. The bill also includes a number of long-sought Democratic projects such as “environmental justice grants.”
Republicans immediately rejected the measure.
“If we reach a decision, along with the administration to move to another phase, that’ll be the time to interact with the Democrats,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “But what you’ve seen in the House is not something designed to deal with reality but designed to deal with aspirations. This is not a time for aspirational legislation. This is a time for practical response to the coronavirus pandemic.”
Varney, an adamant critic of states’ stay-at-home rules for economic reasons, said Pelosi’s plan would benefit the rich while leaving poorer, working-class taxpayers behind.
“Talk about vote buying,” he said. “Allowing a deduction for state and local taxes again, and that is what Pelosi wants, is direct support for the rich. And by the way, these days the rich, the elite, they vote Democrat. The speaker says she is making this 3-trillion-dollar proposal with ‘deepest humanity.’ Well, has the speaker considered the social cost of stay-at-home rules, like domestic violence, alcoholism, and drug use?”
Conservatives such as Varney have argued that bailing out laid-off workers disincentives work and makes a rejuvenated American economy less likely anytime soon.
“Her plan encourages stay-at-home. It keeps people locked down in sometimes awful conditions. Where is the liability protection for businesses that do open?” he asked.
“There are those who said, ‘Let’s just pause,” Pelosi said in unveiling the measure this week. “The families who are suffering know that hunger doesn’t take a pause. The rent doesn’t take a pause. The bills don’t take a pause. The hardship of losing a job or tragically losing a loved one doesn’t take a pause.”
