“Never let a crisis go to waste.” The coronavirus was the perfect opportunity for Congress to do what it so often does; namely, spend money it doesn’t have on projects that people don’t need. The relief package to extend worker’s compensation and direct cash and credit to mandated laid-off employees was itself infected with nonemergency spending. Expenditures such as art funding, nullifying voter ID laws, airplane engine efficiency, federal mandated early voting/ballot harvesting, solar panels and wind turbines, and countless diversity issues were affixed to this life-support bill that delayed its passage and much-needed relief.
None of these extraneous programs could pass on their own merits under normal congressional order (co-sponsors, committee hearings, amendments, floor voting). The only antidote to this infectious spending is a presidential line-item veto, already conferred on the vast majority of the governors. The current Supreme Court would likely uphold this much-needed fiscal discipline.
