Trump Kicks COVID Bill Back To Congress; Demands $2,000 Stimulus, Shreds Lawmakers Over Mountain Of Pork

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Trump Kicks COVID Bill Back To Congress; Demands $2,000 Stimulus, Shreds Lawmakers Over Mountain Of Pork

by Tyler Durden

Tuesday, Dec 22, 2020 - 19:46

VIDEO EMBEDDED (4 MINUTES)

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-kicks-covid-bill-back-congress-demands-2000-stimulus-shreds-congress-over-mountain

President Trump appeared to threaten to veto the COVID-19 stimulus package that Congress passed almost 24 hours earlier, telling lawmakers to boost checks for Americans to $2,000 as well as "get rid of wasteful and unnecessary items" in the spending bill

Trump said "throughout the summer, Democrats cruelly blocked COVID relief legislation in an effort to advance their extreme left wing agenda and influence the election..."

"it's taken forever" to get a package and the bill passed "is much different than anticipated."

"It really is a disgrace," he added.

Then reeled off a list of disgusting 'pork' (read the details here) that has been piled into this record-breaking 5,593 page bill.

As Axios notes, many of the items Trump listed, such as foreign aid, which were not related to COVID-19 are not part of the coronavirus relief package. These form part of the government funding bill, which was passed alongside the coronavirus relief package.

Then he took a shot at Biden and the election

"Send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package and maybe that administration will be me and we will get it done."

Watch the full statement here:

[VIDEO]

..and the market is not happy...

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

 

[Boat + 1,323]

One mans pork could save 10’s of thousands of lives and less rapid spreading. 22 billion for contact tracing. We also need a same day testing and result that is more accurate. This should have been happening in March.

Edited December 23, 2020 by Boat

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Complains covid relief is too slow coming....  proceeds to block relief. 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Enthalpic

[Roch + 537]

Major Pork Sale in Washington DC.  

Same 'ol , Same 'ol 

Nothing will change as long as White Philadelphia suburban, College Educated, Soccer Moms, Joy Baehart fans that don't care about China Hegemony, Saving U.S. mfg jobs or Mass flood of Illegal aliens vote for a politician because he wears a mask . 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Roch

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

4 hours ago, Roch said:

Major Pork Sale in Washington DC.  

Same 'ol , Same 'ol 

Nothing will change as long as White Philadelphia suburban, College Educated, Soccer Mom, Joy Baehart fans that don't care about China Hegemony, Saving U.S. mfg jobs or Mass flood of Illegal aliens vote for a politician because he wears a mask . 

Trump is still POTUS for a bit longer.  If there is still a "swamp" in Washington trump failed on his election promises. So if you want more of the "same 'ol same 'ol" keep supporting trump!

 

[JoMack + 549]

Trump must VETO this bill.  It's beyond pork!  $25,000,000 for Pakistani women to open bank accounts? Excuse me?   I thought I'd heard it all but this is the Big Whooper of 5,000 pages filled with dog poop paid for by the taxpayers so far into the future only a NYT economist will enlighten us so we all don't totally freak out.

While, Pelosi said 6 months ago $1,000 for the American people was crumbs and an insult, now $600 bucks is just great! A pittance to the people in this country so they can pay corrupt governments for some godforsaken reasons that we know in some twisted way help Pelosi and McConnell.These morons manage our money but believe it is their own and Trump needs to stop them in their tracks!   

And, today, Biden's (old shoe Obama flak) press halfwit Saki, said that they won't be able to fully open the border on day one, but soon, ladies and gentlemen, so don't worry, 2 million illegal aliens are on their way. 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Rand Paul's 2020 Airing Of (Spending) Grievances

(SEE PDF "SCRIBD" in ARTICLE)

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-gotta-lot-problems-rand-pauls-2020-airing-spending-grievances

Having been almost the lone voice of sanity this week in Washington as he lambasted the insane levels of 'pork' piled into the Spending/COVID Bill, Senator Rand Paul has turned his ire up to 11 with the release of his annual "airing of grievances" exposure of all that is bad and wasteful about America's politics.

In a series of tweets, Dr.Paul offered little in the way of holiday cheer... that is sure to disgust many...

Take Congress...PLEASE! They have really outdone themselves this year with the massive special interest giveaway disguised as a relief bill. It is a disgrace in both the level of spending and the process they used to try to sneak it through. But this week’s pork-a-thon isn’t new.

My #Festivus Waste Report is now an unfortunate Holiday tradition, though a shameful one, if most legislators had any shame. Why? This one report details $54 BILLION in wasted spending.

The average taxpayer pays around $10,000 in taxes. That means they set the taxes of 5,471,368 people on fire this year. And that’s just want we could document in one little report, and doesn’t come close to counting the unconstitutional things Congress spends on.

What would $54 billion dollars of taxpayer money have funded if we had tried to use it properly?

One example, it would have built 456,221 miles of road.

It would have built TWO entire border walls with Mexico.

It could have funded the Department of the Treasury for three years, not that we really want to spend that much at Treasury.

Speaking of Treasury, I see Joe Biden says he intends to nominate Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve to run the treasury. Talk about letting the fox in the henhouse. AUDIT THE FED! AUDIT THE TREASURY! AUDIT YELLEN AND BIDEN!! AUDIT EVERYTHING!

Ok, now that I got that off my chest, back to the waste report.

So this year, while the petty tyrants in many of our states closed the schools (against all science), Congress said oh, we can do better than that. So they spent $25 MILLION to teach English to rural, unemployed Romanians.

They also spent $36 million to study why hair turns gray. I have a few theories on that, and they all have to do with being in the U.S. Senate with people who vote for the things in this waste report.

They spent $1.5m to get Eastern Mediterranean kids to stop smoking hookah. Then they said hey, let’s go all out, and snuck a bunch of new rules about shipping vape products in the omnibus bill this week.

They spent $3m to interview San Franciscans about edible cannabis use. Really. They must not have spent a lot of time around people who love cannabis. You do NOT need to pay them to talk about it.

What’s next, government funding to get people to post more about their CrossFit and Keto programs?

The government is never content to just waste money normally. They have to really put their shoulders into it. So this year, the Defense Department spent $1 BILLION in funds intended for Covid relief on unrelated acquisitions.

In my favorite WTF moment of the #Festivus Waste report: Your government spent $4.5 million to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine.

I do this all day long, and I swear to God I don’t even know what that means.

Your betters have spent a lot of this year reminding you the rules don’t apply to them. French Laundry dinners. Traveling for holidays while promoting restrictions for you, the stories seem to come up all the time

It came up in the bill this week too when they spent $20 million to rebuild a runway for private planes on Nantucket.

This marks Dr. Paul’s sixth edition of the Festivus Report as he continues working to alert the American people to how their federal government uses their hard-earned money. This year, each story received a “Platinum Pig Award” that ranked the waste on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being the most wasteful). Sections are broken down into Health Care; Foreign Aid; Environment, Energy, Science; Military; and Miscellaneous, and highlights include lizards on treadmills, losing over 100 drones in Afghanistan, and combating binge-watching.

Below is Senator Paul's full 'Festivus' Report:  [pdf SCRIBD]

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Part of what Congress had approved was "Climate Change" funding...the largest ever!

QUOTE

A new economic stimulus proposal that has already, amazingly, been approved by the U.S. Congress sets aside approximately $35.2 billion for energy tech initiatives in what one policy analyst called “the biggest energy bill we’ve seen in a decade.”

Here is the article...

https://community.oilprice.com/topic/21211-the-world-economic-forum-davos-setting-the-agenda-on-fossil-fuels-global-regulations-etc/#comment-140905

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

[JoMack + 549]

In 2015, the Crescent Dunes plant opened outside of Las Vegas.  It has now closed and abandoned.  The failure of Crescent Dunes solar farms cost the taxpayers 1/2 billion bucks.  So, let's take the next taxpayer bailout called Ivanpah.  The $2.3 billion solar farm was built in 2010 with 350,000 garage size mirrors, with three 40 story high boiling towers in the Mojave Desert.    The computers controlling the mirrors went haywire and hit one of the boiling towers setting it on fire.  The light beams strike birds, which the inspectors on the ground call streamers.  Supporters say cats kill more birds than the solar farms, but they don't explain that these birds are not sparrows in the yard.

Multiple complaints by pilots say that the beams are blinding them in the air. The facility was built to produce 1 TW but is generating 377MW of electricity on 4,000 acres and electrifies 140,000 homes.  The towers contain water and molten salt to create steam for electricity.  They have found that the farm sucks up more water resources for its boilers and requires more natural gas than was expected to power it up each morning.   So Ivanpah is creating more green house gas emissions than any benefit the solar power can deliver.  When Ivanpah fails, will be in the near future it seems.

So, soon Biden will be entering into more projects like Crescent Dunes and Ivanpah for the Green New Deal.  We know this, since that is what he says and this is what the environmentalists and the Paris Climate Accord will demand.  The people in this country?  It really doesn't matter, does it.

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

23 minutes ago, JoMack said:

So, soon Biden will be entering into more projects like Crescent Dunes and Ivanpah for the Green New Deal.  We know this, since that is what he says and this is what the environmentalists and the Paris Climate Accord will demand.  The people in this country?  It really doesn't matter, does it.

These types of projects are inevitable when trying new forms of energy generation, some things you try don't work out, others do. Now that they've tried many different methods the ones that work are garnering the investments. The next bunch of govt. boondoggles will be in entirely new economic areas.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Strangelovesurfing

[JoMack + 549]

10 minutes ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

These types of projects are inevitable when trying new forms of energy generation, some things you try don't work out, others do. Now that they've tried many different methods the ones that work are garnering the investments now. The next bunch of govt. boondoggles will be in entirely new economic areas.

Sounds like you know about successful projects?  Can you expound?

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

Just now, JoMack said:

Sounds like you know about successful projects?  Can you expound?

Lot's of regular silicon PV fields are profitable these days. I've worked on several installations near where I live. Those mirror concentrated light set ups are garbage from what I've seen none are economical. Nevada has another one of those crap set ups if memory serves. 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

On 12/24/2020 at 10:25 AM, Ward Smith said:

The arrow of time...

Complaining about ineffectiveness of actions before they happen. Just like trump complaining about election fraud before the election.  Data doesn't matter when you have preconceived notions.

The USA has a long history of suppressing communism in other countries. Do not think you are the "good guys" who do never interfere in other countries' politics.  Does Nepal, Venezuela, or Georgia actually want your "promotion of democracy?"  Propaganda?

If you get a taste of your own manipulative medicine back from Russia or China Good!  Stop pretending you own the world and can dictate policy.

Lastly, the amount of waste here is a tiny drop of in the bucket compared to the useless military penis measuring contest.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Enthalpic

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

Those mirror concentrated light set ups are garbage from what I've seen none are economical.

That's my observation too. I still think the idea is good but it is applied in the wrong way. 

Trying to use mirrors to run a traditional boiler / electrical power plant is not going to work evidently. 

What can work is using the light to warm up input ingredients before they enter a high temperature industrial process. The actual process is still under fine control by the operator but now the inputs are at 50C instead of 20C therefore they burn less gas and use less electricity.  It is still solar power. 

Here in Alberta we have many rail cars full of cold thick oil that needs to be warmed up a lot to be processed at the refineries. Why not have a couple parabolic mirrors pointed at them as they approach the transfer station?

Solar power does not have to be electricity to reduce fossil fuel demands; it just has to make heat.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Enthalpic

[Hotone + 412]

On 12/23/2020 at 12:00 PM, Boat said:

One mans pork could save 10’s of thousands of lives and less rapid spreading. 22 billion for contact tracing. We also need a same day testing and result that is more accurate. This should have been happening in March.

@Tom Nolan

This is what happens when you have a president that doesn't do his job and plays golf all the time.  The stimulus package is critical to meet the desperate needs of millions of people.  If Trump was doing his job, he should have been monitoring the details of the bills during the negotiation process on a constant basis.  He should have provided his inputs and raised any objections during the negotiations.  He can't wait until the bill got passed by both houses, and then throw a spanner in the works.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/12/24/donald-trump-golf-relief-coronavirus-pandemic-sot-vpx-nr.cnn

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/18/politics/donald-trump-absent-covid-stimulus-vaccine/index.html

Edited December 28, 2020 by Hotone

[JoMack + 549]

On 12/25/2020 at 9:29 PM, Strangelovesurfing said:

These types of projects are inevitable when trying new forms of energy generation, some things you try don't work out, others do. Now that they've tried many different methods the ones that work are garnering the investments. The next bunch of govt. boondoggles will be in entirely new economic areas.

Agree to some extent on investments in energy generation, but we're talking about the money we give to the government which is breaking  our economic back.

Omnibus-bill- Trillions of spending filled with a bunch of rhetoric than real meat, except proverbial pork.  $35 Billion for research in renewables and the continuation of subsidies that would have lapsed in 2021 for wind and solar programs and added a 35% tax credit for offshore wind turbines.   The Interior pulled out 11 construction and operations plans for offshore wind projects on its docket.  One was the Vineyard Wind Project off Massachusetts coast and - in the Bill, says, good idea but was withdrawn.  So, a massive amount of largesse for the special interests with little movement for sustained reliable energy.  

Just to point out one small example, there is a segment for LNG and pipeline safety in the Bill.  No, not improving pipelines by giving assistance in replacing sections the pipeline owners want to change out, but the establishment of a National Center of Excellence for Liquified Natural Gas Safety to strengthen the government's knowledge about the LNG facilities.  So, we spend millions on a Center to educate the new government employees about the LNG process so they know how to regulate it and fine the facilities. Great.

So government and energy make a bad team. The Governor of Michigan shut down the Line 5 pipeline from Canada last month using the courts.  The pipeline has been in use since 1953 with zero issues and moves 550,000 bbls of crude from Canada and the Bakkan fields in ND to refineries in Detroit and Toledo.  It also travels east to Montreal and a refinery in Warren, Pa.  Therefore, it is an integral pipeline and this one Governor can halt the system and disrupt refine jet fuel and propane.  The lawsuit against the  Dakota Access Pipeline goes in front of the court on January 8, 2021.  The pipeline has been moving crude oil since 2017 from the Bakkan in ND and in spring of 2020, a lawsuit was filed that in 2017, and the court ruled the Corps of Engineers allowed the pipeline owner Energy Transfer to build beneath South Dakota Lake Oahe and it told ET to drain the pipeline and shut it down.  ET fought it and a stay was given in July and this would be the second pipeline shut down coming from the Bakkan.   The 3rd is the Keystone XL which, with a Biden Administration,  will more likely than not have the Presidential permit revoked so the pipeline can cross the border. with Canada. So 3 down and 1 billion dollar pipeline on the Atlantic side didn't even try to begin laying line.  

There is a lot to be said for the Green New Deal since Biden has a lot of power to stifle the energy supply in the country by just sleeping at his desk and letting Congress spend us into oblivion.

 

 

 

[specinho + 467]

Those money allocated to pakistan, Hindustan, ---stan etc, to educate people on importance of voting system and democracy, to teach those who might be on barter trading  on the importance of having an account at the bank........ etc etc........ might be a price to pay as a self appointed leader of the world by Biden's government....... Have they sent the bill  too early to Trump and gotten a boot??

 

[notsonice + 1,255]

Trump Kicks COVID Bill Back To Congress???? Headline should read........ Trump Flip Flops after realizing he was the one requesting pork.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Trump signed the thing. 

All the people who disliked the bill should now like trump less.

 

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

On 12/23/2020 at 12:08 PM, Tom Nolan said:

They spent $3m to interview San Franciscans about edible cannabis use. Really. They must not have spent a lot of time around people who love cannabis. You do NOT need to pay them to talk about it.

In fact, they won't shut up about their love of weed.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

With the new bill, we'll be 25T in debt, $75,000 for every man, woman and child living in America.

California is a great example of reaching prematurely for renewable energy at the detriment of higher taxes and regulation: they are in such bad fiscal shape that they've even floated the idea of demanding Ca. state income tax progressively for ten years from people who have moved away from Ca. You and I both know that won't hold water, but it's indicative of just how desperate they are for money. 

One thing is for sure, this stuff will test Modern Monetary Theory right down to the spines of its electronic book cover. Maybe the national debt just goes up up and away and nobody cares, but inflation is going to ultimately devalue all government-backed fiat currencies to the point where they will be near worthless. 

Gold or Bitcoin, take your choice. Or, interestingly enough, oil and gas. Now there's a novel investment idea.