Bill funding COVID through 2025 now up for a vote in the Senate.
Read the full bill here.
SEE THE LIST:
| REPRESENTATIVE | PARTY | STATE | VOTE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bice (OK) | Republican | Oklahoma | YEA |
| Brady | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Burgess | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Calvert | Republican | California | YEA |
| Carter (TX) | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Cheney | Republican | Wyoming | YEA |
| Cole | Republican | Oklahoma | YEA |
| Diaz-Balart | Republican | Florida | YEA |
| Fitzpatrick | Republican | Pennsylvania | YEA |
| Fleischmann | Republican | Tennessee | YEA |
| Gimenez | Republican | Florida | YEA |
| Gonzales, Tony | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Gonzalez (OH) | Republican | Ohio | YEA |
| Granger | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Hinson | Republican | Iowa | YEA |
| Joyce (OH) | Republican | Ohio | YEA |
| Katko | Republican | New York | YEA |
| McCaul | Republican | Texas | YEA |
| Meijer | Republican | Michigan | YEA |
| Miller-Meeks | Republican | Iowa | YEA |
| Newhouse | Republican | Washington | YEA |
| Reschenthaler | Republican | Pennsylvania | YEA |
| Rogers (KY) | Republican | Kentucky | YEA |
| Rutherford | Republican | Florida | YEA |
| Simpson | Republican | Idaho | YEA |
| Turner | Republican | Ohio | YEA |
| Upton | Republican | Michigan | YEA |
| Womack | Republican | Arkansas | YEA |
| Young | Republican | Alaska | YEA |
The Epoch Times reports:
Democrats’ $1.5 trillion omnibus bill would provide funding for border security in eight foreign nations—many of whom are U.S. adversaries—while providing no new funding for U.S. border security.
The omnibus bill allocates $370 million to “enhanced border security” measures in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman, of which $150 million alone is set to go toward border funding in Jordan. In addition, the bill provides funding for border security measures in Libya, Nepal, and Pakistan, a longtime U.S. adversary.
As a compromise, GOP lawmakers retained around $2 billion in previously-allocated border wall construction funds, but the omnibus bill contains no new funds for border security along the U.S. southern border.
Preston Huennekens, government relations manager at the nonpartisan Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), blasted the measure in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“It is insulting to the American people that Democrats would rather secure the borders of countries such as Oman, Pakistan, and Libya while our own states on the border are overwhelmed with illegal immigration,” Huennekens said.
“The omnibus package offered exactly zero dollars for the hiring of any additional border or immigration agents, and also took steps to dismantle enforcement tools such as the 287(g) program,” he continued, referencing a program that allows state and local law enforcement officials to aid the Department of Homeland Security to find and deport illegal aliens.
“This shows that Democrats are simply out of touch with the American electorate, who overwhelmingly disapprove of President [Joe] Biden’s handling of immigration,” Huennekens concluded. “Democrats ignore our raging border crisis at their own peril.”
The Daily Signal reports:
When congressional leaders rolled out the 2,700-page, $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill this week, they made sure to lard it up with plenty of pork.
Such so-called earmarks were banned by conservatives a decade ago after high-profile cases of corruption were exposed, sending Members of Congress and lobbyists to prison, and after clear examples of waste were uncovered, such as the infamous “bridge to nowhere.”
Unfortunately, earmarks are making a big return in President Joe Biden’s first appropriations package.
Tucked away in the Explanatory Statements accompanying the legislation are thousands of special interest funding provisions inserted at the request of Members of Congress. A list of all the earmarks attached to the bill spans 367 pages by itself.
Unsurprisingly, some of these earmarks advance leftist woke ideology.
Here are six examples of woke earmarks included in the omnibus spending bill:
Racist Energy Systems
Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey secured $995,000 for “Grid Resilience and Equity in the Energy Transition” research at the University of Massachusetts. Notice the word “equity” in the title. That means the left is going to redistribute taxpayer dollars to fix some perceived racist inequality in the energy system.
This taxpayer funding will be used to promote a “fast and fair transition to a decarbonized energy system in the United States” by the Energy Transition Institute and a local utility company. The faculty director of this institute stated, “The current energy system is inequitable, not just overseas but here in the U.S. The energy system is racist.”
Political Museums
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown secured $500,000 for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a museum in Cincinnati dedicated to telling the stories of the Underground Railroad and the journey to freedom from the horrors of slavery. This history is vital to understanding our past so that we can create a better future, striving towards realizing those self-evident truths described in our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.
Unfortunately, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center continues to engage in modern left-wing politics. The center has lobbied in favor of the controversial H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would give unelected federal bureaucrats the power to veto state election laws, overriding the choices of voters and legislators.
The center also lobbies against legislation that would ban the teaching of the racist and divisive tenets of critical race theory to grade schoolers in Ohio, calling systemic racism a “foundation of our nation since 1619.”
Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Equity Center
The Hockessin Colored School #107 played a historic role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that ended segregation in schools. Now, more than 60 years after the school closed its doors, The Friends of Hockessin Colored School #107, Inc. are receiving $750,000 in federal taxpayer funds at the request of Delaware Sens. Chris Coons and Tom Carper to transform the property into a center for “diversity, inclusion, and social equity.”
According to the group, the center would be used to host DEI workshops on controversial topics such as “ethnicities,” “gender identity and genetics,” “public safety and social justice,” and “social determinants of health.”
Health Equity for Pool Improvements
New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman was able to get $496,000 in the name of “health equity” for “pool improvements” in his home district. According to Bowman, these are “essential capital improvements” to YMCA pools. He cited evidence showing that African Americans and Hispanic children have lower abilities to swim than other groups.
Bowman does not justify on his website why $496,000 is needed for just the YMCA of Yonkers but instead simply justifies this spending by saying, “This project is essential for minimizing disparities in access to swimming lessons and aerobics, promoting health equity.”
Climate Studies Diversity
Massachusetts’ Markey and Warren were also able to combine two left-wing priorities into their $500,000 earmark for Worcester State University to increase diversity and inclusion for STEM students to study climate change. According to Warren, “This project would increase access and success for under-represented incoming college students.”
Equitable Shellfish Aquaculture
Rhode Island Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed requested $1.6 million of federal taxpayer funding for Roger Williams University for the “development of equitable growth of shellfish aquaculture in Rhode Island.”
It is unclear why shellfish aquaculture in Rhode Island needs to be woke. The amount provided in the final omnibus is actually more than three times the amount originally sponsored by Whitehouse.
FOX News reports:
The massive $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill currently being debated in Congress contains tens of millions of dollars in spending on programs meant to benefit political adversaries abroad and has been widely criticized by conservatives who say that the legislation is packed full of items on the Democrat Party’s progressive wishlist.
The bill, which is over 2,700 pages and was released Tuesday night, provides tens of millions of dollars to programs that appear to benefit Venezuela and Russia, who are currently in the middle of a global oil crisis generated by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
“Of the funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘Economic Support Fund’, not less than $40,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs for Venezuela,” the bill states.
…
“This funding, championed by Republicans and Democrats alike, supports brave civil society leaders and human rights activists in Venezuela who are opposed to the Maduro regime,” a House Appropriations Committee spokesperson told Fox News regarding the Venezuela funding. “This investment is consistent with House Democrats’ support for democracy and human rights around the world.”
In a statement released on Wednesday, the Heritage Foundation slammed the bill for its spending priorities and called on Republicans to oppose it.
“The bill is loaded with the Biden administration’s radical progressive policies,” the foundation said. ” It fails to reverse the COVID-19 emergency or the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates, as conservative leaders have called for, and instead adds even more emergency COVID-19 spending. It would increase annual funding for the IRS to $12.6 billion. It doubles down on the Green New Deal style government subsidies for green energy and climate policies, such as ‘a historic level of funding’ for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). It also includes more than $4 billion in Congressional Direct Spending, or earmarks.”
