| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #180 12/15/2020 |
| 1) No Deal!!!!! All of Washington seems to be drinking too much spiked egg nog. The latest “bipartisan stimulus” deal in Washington is $748 billion. It’s a rotten proposal with no pro-growth tax cuts. Just spend, spend, spend like it were passing out M&Ms. It tells you a lot of how government is drunk with power these days that this enormous sum, bigger than our entire national defense budget, is considered a “skinny deal.” The alternative Plan B proposal is even worse: $748 billion PLUS $150 billion for handouts to blue state mayors and governors. In this version, the Pelosi Democrats agree to liability protection for nursing homes, hospitals, stores, and restaurants. We have supported a liability shield for employers and health care providers. These lawsuits could proliferate in 2021 as the trial bar vultures swoop in to add insult to our collective miseries. But this is a terrible deal. No way should the GOP pay out $150 billion to blue states as a ransom to get liability reform. Many states have already passed liability shields, and in the end, most of the states that will face the biggest blizzard of litigation will be blue states where trial lawyers have outsized political clout. So Democrats are only spiting themselves by nixing the lawsuit protections. As these pages have emphasized, the economic rebound under President Trump is unprecedented. That recovery is imperiled by the new wave of the virus and the lockdowns of the economy in the mostly blue states across the country. The solution is NOT to reward lockdown mayors and governors with a nine-figure check to pay for their imbecilic behavior. Short-term humanitarian aid to people and businesses that have been shut down or locked out of their jobs may help as a lifeline, but this is not a STIMULUS for growth. One of the most elementary lessons in economics is that government spending does not create income or wealth, it redistributes it – creating a net loss. Democrats don’t understand this. We hope and pray that Republicans still do. |
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