American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Missouri for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this massive non-COVID spending bill. If you look over the last year during this pandemic, Congress has come together many times in a bipartisan way to specifically help families who are struggling, to help small businesses who are hanging on by a thread, and to try to put more money into finding a vaccine.

Mr. Speaker, we were successful in those initiatives--in fact, so successful that we now have three proven vaccines that are out there working because of President Trump's Operation Warp Speed. We were able to help millions of small businesses stay afloat. There are still more struggling. In many cases, in States that are mismanaging this, you are seeing a disparate impact.

Mr. Speaker, instead of working with Republicans and Democrats, President Biden tried this go-it-alone approach, to allow Speaker Pelosi to write a bill behind closed doors and bring the bill forward, not allowing a single Democrat to file an amendment on a $1.9 trillion spending bill in the House.

When you look at what is in the bill--and many people reference polling, as if we should vote based on a poll that doesn't show the full story--we are starting to get the full story.

Mr. Speaker, ask people: Do you think, with hundreds of billions of dollars still out there unspent from previous bills, we should borrow $1.9 trillion from our children to do things like send $1,400 checks to people in Federal prison?

Mr. Speaker, yes, that is in this bill. Pick your prisoner of choice. The Boston Marathon bomber gets a $1,400 check in this bill, and we are borrowing that money from our children.

Has that been asked by a pollster?

I would argue no.

There was an amendment to strip that out. Every Democrat who had the opportunity voted to continue sending those checks to felons. No wonder, last week, 97 Democrats voted to allow felons to vote in elections. Luckily, that amendment barely failed.

Mr. Speaker, look at what is in this bill.

Is there any money in this bill, by the way, to specifically open our schools?

Unfortunately, the answer to that is no.

We had an amendment to require that if you are going to give hundreds of billions of new money to schools, shouldn't it at least be used to open those schools?

The science said to open schools. The union bosses say no.

Mr. Speaker, look at what is in this bill and what is not in this bill. This should be a targeted relief bill. Instead, this is an attempt by Speaker Pelosi to further promote her socialist agenda.

Mr. Speaker, 95 percent of the money in this bill for these schools can't even be spent this year, so this bill actually keeps schools closed longer.

Think about that juxtaposition. President Biden has created a crisis at America's border. President Biden said America's border is open, but in this bill, he keeps schools closed.

How does that make any sense?

Again, Mr. Speaker, you go through this bill, and they actually inserted language in this bill by dark of night, and I am sure it has never been polled. But in this bill, it bans States from cutting taxes, if anyone can explain to me how that has anything to do with COVID. You look at a State like New York that is losing hundreds of thousands of people from gross mismanagement by their Governor and because of high taxes to States like Florida, which have no income tax. If the State of New York in this bill tries to fix the problems they have created with high taxes by trying to bring their State in line, they actually get penalized in this bill for cutting taxes.

This has nothing to do with COVID. We should work together on something that helps families get through this, helps gets more vaccines in arms, and helps open up our schools.

Mr. Speaker, this is a failed socialist approach. I urge rejection.

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