Here in Part 2, the money that was supposed to go to COVID relief, instead went to unions, salaries for workers, infrastructure items, and even illegals. From the Justthenews.com, we have some excerpts to share below, but you can see the article for more information. This should enrage many hard-working Americans about how our money is spent!!!
The review found that, in numerous cases across the country, local, state, and federal officials used pandemic relief to fund other, often politically contentious spending priorities, such as teacher pay raises and cash grants for illegal immigrants.
One of the most prominent examples came at the federal level, where lawmakers attempted to bail out union pension plans facing possible insolvency.
In March, Democrats included in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was meant to help the country recover from the health and economic effects of COVID-19, about $86 billion to save private unions’ multiemployer retirement funds. The largest of these is the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund.
Democrats argued at the time that the bailout would keep dozens if not hundreds of pensions solvent for several more years at a lower cost than if Congress acted later. It’s unclear, however, why they included the pension cash infusion in a law purportedly meant to combat the pandemic rather than other legislation.
Beyond unions, the federal government also sent pandemic relief funds to businesses linked to the Chinese government. In fact, the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration gave between $192 million and $419 million in emergency U.S. taxpayer funding to at least 125 Chinese firms with links to the Chinese Communist Party, according to the Horizon Advisory strategic consulting group.
The Treasury Department has also said states and localities can spend COVID-19 relief on infrastructure, expanding access to broadband internet, and modernizing cyber security. Indeed, the department has given them significant flexibility in how they spend their federal pandemic relief funds, indicating the money can go to replacing lost revenue as well as infrastructure. However, the department announced this months after states already submitted their plans for how they would spend COVID-19 funds on these very areas.
Many states said in writing they’re allocating nine-figure sums of federal pandemic relief funds on broadband, housing, and other infrastructure projects. Kentucky, for example, is devoting $250 million to water and sewer infrastructure projects across the state, billing them as part of the COVID-19 recovery effort. The Bluegrass State is also including $300 million to expand broadband services as part of its pandemic recovery plan.
Just the News previously exposed many such examples, including Detroit Public Schools using $60 million of its pandemic relief funds to give out bonuses and Connecticut spending $21.1 million on “personal services-salaries” and $2.6 million on employee benefits.
Beyond school expenditures, Washington state is using $340 million of its pandemic relief to provide one-time cash grants of $1,000 for illegal immigrants, according to the state’s Recovery Plan Performance Report. That’s in addition to $128 million in funding provided by the CARES Act, another federal COVID-19 relief stimulus, for illegal immigrants last fiscal year.
Some states and localities allocated COVID-19 relief to childcare, while New Mexico appropriated well over half a billion dollars to replenish its Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund as well as repay the federal loans issued by the U.S. Department of Labor to support the overwhelming surge of UI claimants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
From the Justthenews.com, you can see the article for more information. This should enrage many hard-working Americans about how our money is spent!!!