Reopening of schools is seen by many as one of the criteria for repairing the country’s pandemic. As such, funding for schools was expected to be included as part of the coronavirus relief package.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Sen. However, Roy Blunt, a Republican in Missouri, argued that “nothing in the bill we are talking about is meant to get kids back into school.”
Facts first: This is false. The bill includes nearly $ 130 billion for K-12 schools. The Congress Budget Office expect only 5% of it will be spent in 2021, as funds from previous aid packages remain, but it is still a few billion spent from the bill this year, which is not ‘nothing’.
The funding in the K-12 Schools Bill aims to help schools ‘take the steps recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure that students and educators can return safely to the classroom’, according to an information sheet from the House Committee on Education and Labor. The amount the Democrats’ bill for K-12 schools provides is more than six times the amount a compromise plan offered by a small group of Republican senators offered to help students return to school.
Most of the funds can be used to update schools’ ventilation systems, reduce class sizes to implement social distance, purchase personal protective equipment and hire support staff. back to school.
Only 9% for healthcare
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said on Tuesday that “(a) about 9% of the money ‘in the coronavirus bill’ is in the health care space. ‘
“Less than 1% of it is about vaccinations,” he added.
Facts first: McConnell is correct that less than 1% of the funding set out in the bill is about vaccinations. And while spending on health care around the coronavirus has been included in the bill, most of it has focused on the economic impact of the pandemic, through direct payments and funds for unemployment benefits.
The dual committee for a responsible federal budget estimates that about $ 137 billion, or about 7% of the funding set out in the bill, is directly linked to the pandemic. The funding includes $ 51 billion for testing and contact tracing, approximately $ 17 billion for ‘vaccine-related activities and programs’ and $ 10 billion for medical supplies through the Defense Production Act.
The amount of health care funding in the bill could be closer to 10%, depending on what McConnell defines as ‘the health care space’. For example, the bill provides an additional $ 70 billion in health care funding through the Actable Care Act and Medicaid.
Other funds in the bill are provided for economic and educational relief from the pandemic.
“It’s clear that not every dollar is going to flow literally to Pfizer, Moderna or J&J,” Stan Veuger, an economics policy scientist at the American Enterprise Law Institute, told CNN. “There is money in it that gives children who normally get free school lunches nutritional help, because of course they do not go to school physically. It is difficult to argue that this has nothing to do with the Covid crisis.”
The biggest ticket items in the bill are the $ 422 billion for individual stimulus checks, $ 350 billion for federal employees and state and local governments and $ 246 billion for unemployment benefits. Although these funds are not specifically targeted at the healthcare space, it is necessary, Democrats say, to address the consequences of the health crisis the U.S. is currently facing with Covid-19.
Biased projects
Senate Republicans also attacked President Joe Biden’s stimulus plan to fund a Democratic ‘wish list’ of initiatives. Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, specifically criticized funds in the original package for the California Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) line.
Barrasso said the stimulus package “is the way Nancy Pelosi gets $ 140 million for her tunnel of love to Silicon Valley.”
Facts first: The initial House bill did allocate funds for the BART extension, which is located outside the congressional district of the House, Nancy Pelosi. However, following the Republican press conference on Tuesday, the Senate parliamentarian rule that the BART funding could not be included in the bill because it was part of a pilot project, CNN reported.
Pelosi’s office confirmed Tuesday night that funding for a bridge in New York State – which has also been criticized by Republicans – will also be removed from the stimulus package.
Pelosi’s office said public works initiatives would help transport systems that were struggling financially through the pandemic due to the decline in fee income.
Despite the removal of these two projects, there is still a little less than $ 30 billion in the bill for transportation agencies. There is money for airports and Amtrak. It’s still there, ‘Veuger of AEI told CNN.
