OPINION:
I just don’t get it. There are so many questions and so few answers at a time when the nation is in great distress. The national debt is over $27 trillion. The national budget includes nearly $400 billion a year in national-debt interest. Yet these figures are never part of the discussion when it comes to legislation. Instead we see Congress passing legislation to increase this burden (“Trump signs coronavirus relief bill after days of tension,” Web, Dec. 27).
The new coronavirus-aid bill is an excellent example. Its price tag is nearly $1 trillion. It contains foreign aid plus funding for museums and more of the like that has nothing to do with fighting the pandemic. How many members of Congress actually read the bill? Is this history repeating itself, considering the infamous Obamacare comment by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2010: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”?
Why does this bill include aid for Pakistan, Myanmar, Vietnam, Jordan and Egypt? What do they have to do with providing aid to jobless Americans and business owners having to shut down? Who included this aid in the bill — staffers? If staffers, did their bosses know about these inclusions?
Finally, why are politicians and the mainstream media essentially silent about this flagrant abuse of legislative power? Where is the voice of President Trump? Certainly his call for increased unemployment aid might have been better received had he said the money would come from eliminating all the pork in the bill.
WARREN MANISON
Potomac, Md.
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