Enewsletters

The House will vote tomorrow on H.R. 5, the Democrats’ so-called “Equality Act”.  I’ve received a number of calls from constituents this week expressing their opposition to this bill and rightly so.  You can rest assured, I will be voting against it.

The bill would include sexual orientation and gender identity under the definition of “sex” in federal anti-discrimination law, including in employment, public accommodations, funding, education and housing.  What does that mean?  Essentially, it undermines protections and opportunities for women by claiming biological “sex” doesn’t exist at all.  It would threaten the existence of a host of protections and programs designed specifically for women, including public school girls’ locker rooms, women’s prisons, and scholarships designated for female athletes.  The Wall Street Journal had an important op-ed this week on how the legislation harms women and imposes progressive gender identity politics on the American people.

Additionally, here are some of the key details of the Democrats’ massive Biden Bailout Bill, being touted by the White House as “COVID-19 legislation”.  The truth is that just 9% of the bill’s $1.9 trillion price tag actually goes to fighting the virus.

Excluding the bill’s stimulus payments to individuals, almost half the bill will not be spent until 2022 or later – and $140 billion of the bill’s funding will not be spent until after 2024.  Only 5% of the funds supposedly meant to help re-open K-12 schools safely would actually be spent this year.  Furthermore, $70 billion has already been appropriated for schools under the previous COVID relief packages.  The CDC tells us schools need a total of $25 billion to reopen safely so we know for certain there is more than enough money available to reopen schools safely — and now.   

Most egregious, the bill includes hundreds of billions in taxpayer funding for left-wing special interests, including:

• A $510 billion bailout of state and local governments for items totally unrelated to COVID, many of whom have been mismanaged for years
• $135 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
• $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services
• And $135 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities
• A $15/hour Washington wage mandate that will kill 1.4 million American jobs

It is also important to know that more than $1 trillion of the funds Congress appropriated in the the previous COVID relief packages hasn’t even been spent yet.

All together, if Congress were to enact this package, it would have approved more than $6 trillion in COVID-related legislation since the start of the pandemic – bigger than the GDP of every country on Earth except the U.S. or China.

This bill is a classic case of liberals in Washington “never letting a crisis go to waste” by jamming through trillions of dollars in new spending and job-wrecking policies.  The best stimulus Washington and America’s governors could offer is this: get out of the way and let the American people use their common sense to reopen our schools and businesses.  I can guarantee you they would do far better than the government. 

The House’s vote on this bill is expected to take place sometime on Friday. Stay tuned for more updates.