March 7, 2021

Sen. Marsha Blackburn crowed to her pals on Fox & Friends about how delighted she was to have cut direct economic benefits to her constituents from the COVID relief package.

Although it was clear the bill would pass, Blackburn reassured the Fox viewers that cruelty is not leaving the Republican party any time soon:

BLACKBURN: The good thing is we’ve been able to stop the minimum wage hike. That is a very good thing for the American people and for jobs in this country and then we've also been able to win a vote on the unemployment insurance so that it’s not at 400, it is at $300. These are good, positive steps. We’ve got some more votes to go. We are continuing to try to whittle money out of this so that the bill is going to be a little bit better.

Given that raising the minimum wage is consistently popular with the majority of Americans, it’s pretty clear that Blackburn's idea of “the American people” refers to only a select group, probably of rich donors.

At the same time, Marie Antoinette Blackburn whined that the COVID relief package doesn’t devote enough money to “anything related to COVID-19.”

BLACKBURN: 91% of this bill does not go to anything related to COVID. It goes for arts, for humanities, for blue-state bailouts, for loan forgiveness for certain categories and groups of individuals and then for paid leave for federal employees so they can stay home with their children who are not in school because the teachers unions will not go back to school. This is some of what you’re seeing. 9% of this bill goes to COVID-19 related spending, 9%.

Yet instead of trying to make sure more of the bill’s spending went to COVID-related spending (never mind the fact that the people and organizations she mentioned are strapped because of the pandemic), Blackburn was delighted to make it even less so.

But wait, there’s more. Blackburn dishonestly suggested to cohost Jedediah Bila that senators know what’s in the bill because Republicans (i.e. Sen. Ron Johnson) required the clerks “read the bill on the floor in its entirety.” But Blackburn “forgot” to mention that she and all her fellow Republicans left the chamber within the first half hour of the 11-hour reading (during which time hundreds of Americans probably died of coronavirus).

Then she claimed, “The more the American people know about this bill the less they like it.” Again, Blackburn’s reference to “the American people” only refers to a select group. The fact is the bill has broad bipartisan support among the real public. And she probably knows that.

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