We’re from the government, and we’re here to help!
American taxpayers still reeling from coronavirus lockdowns will be shelling out billions to foreign countries if Congress passes a $2.3 trillion spending bill unveiled Monday.
The 5,593 page budget-busting bill was posted online Monday afternoon, only hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a vote would be held.
For some countries, Christmas came early:
- $169,739,000 to Vietnam, including $19 million to remediate dioxins (page 1476).
- Unspecified funds to “continue support for not-for-profit institutions of higher education in Kabul, Afghanistan that are accessible to both women and men in a coeducational environment” (page 1477).
- $198,323,000 to Bangladesh, including $23.5 million to support Burmese refugees and $23.3 million for “democracy programs” (page 1485).
- $130,265,000 to Nepal for “development and democracy programs” (page 1485).
- Pakistan: $15 million for “democracy programs” and $10 million for “gender programs” (page 1486).
- Sri Lanka: Up to $15 million “for the refurbishing of a high endurance cutter,” which is a type of patrol boat (page 1489).
- $505,925,000 to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to “address key factors that contribute to the migration of unaccompanied, undocumented minors to the United States” (pages 1490-1491).
- $461,375,000 to Colombia for programs related to counternarcotics and human rights (pages 1494-1496).
- $74.8 million to the “Caribbean Basin Security Initiative” (page 1498).
- $33 million “for democracy programs for Venezuela” (page 1498).
- Unspecified amount to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago “for assistance for communities in countries supporting or otherwise impacted by refugees from Venezuela” (page 1499).
- $132,025,000 “for assistance for Georgia” (page 1499).
- $453 million “for assistance for Ukraine” (page 1500).
Incredibly, there’s more yet—TONS more.
No less incredibly, I still occasionally see some folks out there braying about how “desperate” the Enemy is, how obvious it is that he’s “frightened” or “worried” about this or that or the other thing, that he’s “on the ropes,” at the end of the line, just about to collapse into a pile of despair and ruin. Judging by this supreme expression of sheer contempt, though, I’d say it looks a lot more like they’re just rubbing our noses in it at this point—openly laughing in our faces, cocking their snook, and daring Real Americans to do a damned thing about it.
Real Americans should definitely oblige them, I believe.
- Entries
Exactly right. This bill, just like the H1B sellout after the election, is the “normal” that everyone in DC is so eager to get back to once the Bad Orange Man is out of the way. Far too much of this garbage happened during Trump’s term, as well, but at least some small resistance was made to the usual grifting. A Harris admin will mean a complete, whole-hog explosion of this kind of stuff as the DC swamp makes up for being “starved” for four years by the Bad Orange Man.
après moi, le déluge
Both of those bills are a mess, Mike, admittedly. And so large that it’s hard to read through them.
But – The Defense Appropriations bill, whatever the hell it’s called, is separate from the COVID relief bill, and it’s the defense funding bill that has all of the foreign aid provisions, IIRC.
It doesn’t help that the “Right-wing” media and a lot of Right pundits are being disingenuous in conflating the two.
The COVID Relief bill has a few things that are hinky in it, too. But they’re different issues than the ones in the separate defense allocations bill.
The president just vetoed the defense bill.
Good for him.
https://thelibertyloft.com/president-trump-vetoes-national-defense-authorization-act/
Yeah, he did that thing. Good to see, too.
That’s not the bill under discussion here, though: the $1.4 billion funding bill that they folded in/bundled with the $900B COVID relief bill is something called the “Consolidated Appropriations Act,. 2021“.
And you wouldn’t believe how much searching I had to do to find that name.
No end of articles out there detailing the contents of the COVID Relief Act. But so far I haven’t found one that gives a detailed synopsis of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. And I’ve been looking.
As I understand it, what they did was link the CAA with the COVID bill for passage at the last minute so they could sneak in the Leftist wishlist that Pelosi/Schumer wanted that has been the hangup on the stimulus package all these months.
And now, apparently the fix is in, and it seems that Google at least wants it to be nearly impossible to get a synopsis of the complete bill. You can get individual provision synopsis on a search – but they’re all under their individual headings: education, employers, etc etc.
Or at least I haven’t been able to. Your Google-Fu might be better than mine and you might have better luck.
Yea, I knew there were two bills. I have not searched for specifics but like you, have seen a few mentions.
Hell, I just assume it is full of nonsensical pork. I assume most of it is a waste.
I’ll always be right.
Heh heh heh. Nooo… you can’t go wrong assuming pork products. 🙂
Damn. I’m so old I remember when Glenn Reynolds used to run PORK BUSTERS as a regular thing on his blog.
“PORK BUSTERS”
I’d forgotten that, but remember it now that you mention it.