Douglas Greene’s letter makes numerous erroneous assumptions about the Biden administration’s American Relief Plan and engages in some questionable math (“Stimulus package doesn’t add up,” Our Readers’ Views, March 5). He assumes the entire $1.9 trillion is to be used for aid payments to individuals and then complains about funding for “pork barrel and special interests”; he can’t have it both ways.
While the ARP bill does provide for about $200 billion in personal aid payments, most of the funds will support essential activities directly related to COVID-19 and segments of the economy in dire straits because of it. Examples of Mr. Greene’s “pork barrel” provisions are maintenance of the food supply chain; support of small food producers; emergency relief to elementary and secondary schools; remedying pandemic-induced learning loss; emergency aid for families vulnerable to eviction and foreclosure from jobs lost to COVID-19; extending supplemental unemployment benefits through June; support for manufacture, distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccines; and support for COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, testing to characterize and identify persons with COVID-19 variants.
Most provisions of the ARP bill are truly intended to limit and help pull America out of this horrendous pandemic. Without this aid America is surely on track to repeat the Great Depression.
