On Friday two Republican lawmakers voted against an $8.3 billion emergency coronavirus funding bill.
Now one of those lawmakers, Ken Buck, is revealing the reason he voted "no" on the bill.
And it has everything to do with what Nancy Pelosi snuck into the bill.
“The president asked for $2.5 billion. I would have supported that. The speaker decided to add all sorts of Christmas tree ornaments to this bill. It was unnecessary. It was too much money. And we never had a hearing to discuss it," Buck stated.
Take a look, via Fox News' “The Ingraham Angle“:
Imagine that.
Looking at the bill, here are just some of the questionable items it contains.
And these numbers are requested funding for foreign, NOT domestic, projects:
$250 million for the “Economic Support Fund”
$435 million for “Global Health Programs”
$300 million for “International Disaster Assistance”
$264 million for “Diplomatic Programs”
$100 million for “Worldwide Security Protection”
Zero of the above funding requests came from the Trump administration. The president asked for $2.5 billion, that's nearly $6 billion less than what speaker Pelosi came back with. And Trump had requested the money be for the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. And Trump's number included $1 billion that would be for developing the vaccine.
The bill also contained a $500,000,000 package pushed by Democrats that was added just minutes before the final vote.
“The American Telemedicine Association, HIMSS, the eHealth Initiative, Health Innovation Alliance and Personal Connected Health Alliance wrote recently to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and other Congressional leaders, asking them make money from the [bill] available for telehealth services and give healthcare professionals ‘as many tools as possible’ to combat spread of the novel coronavirus,” Healthcare IT News reported Thursday.
Pelosi honored the request, boosting the bill from $7.8 billion to $8.3 billion.
So, here's the summary (rough math):
Approx. $5 billion on U.S. programs (federal and state)
Approx. $3 billion in foreign aid (non Americans)
Approx. $500 Million General Administrative expenses.
The bill ended up making it through the House.
Trump's $2.5 billion plan made a lot more sense to me. What says you?