MEUSER COMMENTS ON COVID-19 RELIEF & FY2021 GOVERNMENT FUNDING BILLS
There is no doubt that there was wasteful spending in the omnibus bill. As a conservative, a Republican, and a member of the Budget Committee, my focus was to cut as much of it as possible, while ensuring that conservative priorities were included.
Democrat Leadership has long advocated for giving billions of our tax dollars to other nations. I fought against that and Republicans successfully negotiated $10 billion less in foreign aid than what Democrat Leadership wanted, with the final bill resulting in a $4 billion decrease from the last year of the Obama Administration. The foreign aid in the omnibus spending bill was at the request of the State Department. In many cases, the requested amount was higher than was ultimately allocated due to efforts by Republicans in Congress to bring the number down. In fact, there was less foreign aid included in this bill than there was in President Trump's first year of office and $2 billion less than last year.
Two years ago, Democrat Leadership shut down the government because they wouldn't provide funding for border security, creating multiple disruptions to the economy. Not only does this bill have border security funding, but also money to build the wall, which has cut the number of illegals coming into this country monthly from over 140,000 to less than 25,000 a year later.
The omnibus spending bill was far from perfect, but Republicans delivered on a number of key conservative priorities, notably:
- Protection from surprise medical billing for patients
- 2nd Amendment Protections
- Safeguards to ensure no taxpayer funding of abortion
- Pay raise for our troops
- Stays under the Budget Cap Agreement and represents a roughly 2% increase, the same increase as last year's spending bill
It is important to note that the omnibus spending bill was NOT the same as the COVID-19 relief bill. Although they were packaged together as one vote, they were negotiated separately. Congress passes a spending bill every year, but wrote a relief bill specifically to respond to the pandemic.
We did our best to make sure that the relief bill was highly targeted and focused on need. For months, Speaker Pelosi pushed for a $3.2 trillion proposal to appease the far-left. Despite being in the minority, Republicans brought the final price tag to less than 10% of her original proposal. Although the final cost of the bill is $900 billion, it includes a net of approximately $325 billion after repurposing $429 billion from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending facilities and $138 billion in unused PPP funds.
- $280 billion in PPP funding for small businesses
- Increases the PPP loan amount for restaurants and the hospitality industry
- $30 billion for vaccines and vaccine distribution
- $82 billion for schools
- $45 billion for transportation
- $13 billion for farmers and producers
- No bail out for blue states
- No stimulus checks for illegals
It is a misunderstanding that COVID-19 relief funding for the American people was given to other nations. Because Republicans are not in the majority, we are at the will of Speaker Pelosi who sets the legislative agenda. It is very unfortunate that Democrat Leadership packaged these separate bills together, which made these two separate plans combined into one bill, confusing.
I am very concerned, as you are, about these important issues. Please forward any specific questions to https://meuser.house.gov/contact so we can respond quickly and serve you best.
To view the funding levels in the FY2021 omnibus passed by the House this week, please click HERE. See below for a breakdown of the HEROES Act, the HEALS Act, and the final agreement:
