GOP House leader: Only 'liberal' states are asking for help
Republicans have opposed federal help for blue states dealing with the economic fallout of COVID-19.
From the April 27 edition of “The Hugh Hewitt Show”:
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): Well, you know, look, what was missed in that interview that you did with Mitch [McConnell] is Mitch talked about all the money that’s already out there.
There’s, like you mentioned, trillions of dollars that have been passed, and only a liberal state that had already had their own problems prior to COVID-19 would be talking about more money as Congress is on the verge of voting for another bill that had over $400 billion in aid to our small businesses who are struggling, to hospitals who are struggling.
And we’re also talking, the president’s talking on down about having hospitals do elective surgeries again, which, by the way, Hugh, that’s something that’s critical to people’s public health.
You know, left out in this discussion about health as it relates to finding a cure for COVID-19 and better ways to deal with social distancing is that there are millions of people that aren’t getting colonoscopies and mammograms and other lifesaving procedures that would find something early that could ultimately save their life.
Those things aren’t happening, and those things need to happen. People need to be taking care of their public health as it relates to other things too.
And so, we need to be doing all this at the same time, but not talking about bailing out states that already had problems before COVID-19 because they were mismanaged, because they have high taxes. You know, you go look at those states you mentioned — California, New York, New Jersey — people were leaving those states in droves, businesses were leaving those states in droves prior to this.
Hopefully, they’ll learn lessons as they’re working to recover and get their economies back. After this tragedy, you don’t want to see anybody have to go bankrupt, but give them the tools to hang on, and the tools to hang on are not going to be bailouts from the federal government, it’s going to be realigning and fixing the problems that you had prior to COVID-19 that were creating millions of people wanting to leave your state.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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