The Senate has passed the American Rescue Plan, and Pennsylvania’s senators are deeply divided on the bill.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is in favor of the measure, while U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey called it “wasteful” and “indefensible.”
The bill had some important changes from what was passed by the U.S. House, including dropping the provision to raise the minimum wage and reducing the number of people who will qualify for the next stimulus payment. The House will have to approve the new version of the bill before it can head to President Biden.
Casey commented, “Now that the Senate has passed the American Rescue Plan, the country is one step closer to putting the virus behind us. When the House passes the American Rescue Plan and sends it to President Biden’s desk, we will put more money in the pockets of working families, help our children return to school safely and ensure everyone who wants to can be vaccinated.”
Provisions Casey authored were included in the bill, including investing in home and community-based services, managing COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities with strike teams, vaccinating seniors, reducing child care costs and supporting foster and homeless youth.
Toomey, who is not seeking re-election, lashed out about the “liberal wish list” of non-COVID related funds that were packed into the $1.9 trillion spending bill.
“Last year, Congress passed, with overwhelmingly bipartisan support, five bills that provided almost $4 trillion in response to COVID. This year, President Biden and congressional Democrats refused to work with Republicans and instead rammed through a wasteful $1.9 trillion bill on a strictly partisan vote.
“This bill is not about responding to COVID. It is about exploiting the final stretch of a public health crisis in order to enact a longstanding liberal wish-list for years into the future. Only a fraction of the funds in this bill can even be spent this year.”
He listed some measures in the bill, all of which he called indefensible: “Making Obamacare subsidies available to people with six figure incomes; sending payments to farmers and ranchers equal to 120 percent of their borrowings, irrespective of their earnings, wealth, or affects from COVID, and exclusively for ethnic minorities or immigrants; sending $1,400 stimulus checks to violent incarcerated criminals; paying federal employees to stay home for another 15 weeks, even after many of them have been working from home for the past year; and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the arts, humanities, and ‘environmental justice.’”
The Republican senator said, “None of this is COVID-related, yet it is all in this spending monstrosity. At the same time, this bill fails to address the biggest problem facing Americans: fully reopening businesses and getting kids back to school as quickly as possible.”
