And talking about cons ...
Liberal special interests ...
"The 1119-page bill is Christmas in March for liberal special interests. It imposes racial and gender pay equity provisions, diversity on corporate boards, increased use of minority-owned banks by federal offices, and a grab-bag of other diversity-themed requirements. It increases the collective bargaining power for unions and cancels all the debt owed by the U.S. Postal Service to the U.S. Treasury. For the global warming crowd, there are increased fuel emission standards and required carbon offsets for airlines, plus tax credits for alternative energy programs. For the kids, there is a provision for student loan payment deferment, and for the education bureaucrats who overcharge them a $9.5 billion giveaway to colleges and universities. It gives $100 million to juvenile justice programs, and suspends various aspects of enforcement of immigration laws.
Perhaps the most troubling sections of the bill are under the rubric ‘‘American Coronavirus/COVID–19 Election Safety and Security” or ‘‘ACCESS” Act. This section would impose requirements on states for early voting, voting by mail, required mailing of absentee ballots to everyone, ballot harvesting (i.e., having third parties deliver absentee ballots), online voter registration, same-day registration and other practices which undermine confidence in the integrity of the ballot. In these days of increasing threats to election security, we should be moving rapidly back to in-person paper ballots, but this bill would be a radical step in the wrong direction.
It is hard quickly to root out whatever other aspects of this bill bear no relationship to COVID-19, but to its backers, that is the point. We can’t really know what’s in it until they pass it, to paraphrase Speaker Pelosi on another such memorable occasion.
The politics of the Democratic proposal are not hard to figure. Democrats are concerned that the Coronavirus crisis could be a “9/11 moment” for President Trump, that people might put aside partisanship for a moment to rally around a leader trying his best to help the country cope."
