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Not Tired of Winning Yet CIV

Let us compare the proposed Democrat tactics to stop the spread of the China Flu with what the Trump Administration is doing and has done, shall we?

I shall make my comment at the outset, since this list is so long. Thank God grown ups are in charge of the White House. Can you imagine what a boondoggle would have happened had Hillary “Benghazi” Clinton, been in charge?

Trump Administration:

WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

  • President Trump declared a national emergency, inviting States, territories, and tribes to access over $42 billion in existing funding.
  • Trump signed legislation securing $8.3 billion for coronavirus response.
  • Trump signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, ensuring that American families and businesses impacted by the virus receive the strong support they need.
  • To leverage the resources of the entire government, the president created a White House Coronavirus Task Force to coordinate response.
  • Vice President Pence named Dr. Deborah Birx to serve as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator.
  • The president has held multiple teleconferences with our nation’s governors to coordinate response efforts and offer his full support.
  • The president has approved major disaster declarations for impacted states like New York, Washington, and California.

TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS

  • In January, Trump reacted quickly to implement travel restrictions on travel from China, buying us valuable time to respond to the virus.
  • The president has announced further travel restrictions on global hotspots, including Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Iran.
  • American citizens returning from travel-restricted countries are being routed to specific airports, where they can be screened and isolated as needed.
  • The United States reached mutual agreements with Mexico and Canada to restrict non-essential travel across our northern and southern borders.
  • The administration announced it will expeditiously return aliens who cross between ports of entry or are otherwise not allowed to enter the country, as the facilities in which these aliens would be held cannot support quarantine for the time needed to assess potential cases.
  • The administration raised travel warnings to their highest level for other hot spot locations, like Japan and South Korea.
  • The president has expanded airport screenings to identify travelers showing symptoms and instituted mandatory quarantines.
  • The State Department issued a global level 4 travel advisory, urging Americans to avoid all international travel due to the coronavirus outbreak worldwide.

EXPANDING TESTING ACCESSIBILITY

  • The FDA issued emergency approval for new commercial coronavirus tests to significantly expand testing across the country.
  • The president secured legislation that will ensure Americans are able to be tested for free.
  • The administration is working with state and local partners and the private sector to open up drive-through testing sites.
  • The administration is working with the private sector to develop a website that Americans can utilize to determine whether they need a test and, if so, where to get it.
  • HHS is providing funding to help accelerate the development of rapid diagnostic tests for the coronavirus.
  • The FDA cut red tape to expand testing availability.
  • Admiral Brett Giroir – the Assistant Secretary for Health and head of the Public Health Service – has been appointed to coordinate coronavirus testing efforts.
  • The FDA is empowering states to authorize tests developed and used by laboratories in their states.
  • The Department of Defense has set up 15 coronavirus testing sites worldwide.
  • The president signed legislation requiring more reporting from state and private labs to ensure our public health officials have the data they need to respond to this outbreak.
  • DoD and HHS worked to airlift hundreds of thousands of swabs and sample test kits from Italy to the United States.

SUPPORTING AFFECTED BUSINESSES

  • The Small Business Administration has announced disaster loans which provide businesses affected by losses due to the shutdowns with up to $2 million.
  • SBA relaxed criteria for disaster assistance loans – expanding small businesses’ access to economic assistance.
  • The president directed the Energy Department to purchase large quantities of crude oil for the strategic reserve.
  • Trump has held calls and meetings with business leaders from the pharmaceutical industry, airlines, health insurers, grocery stores, retail stores, banks, and more.
  • The Treasury Department approved the establishment of the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility to provide liquidity to the financial system.

HELPING FAMILIES AND WORKING AMERICANS

  • The administration negotiated legislation which will provide tax credits for eligible businesses that give paid leave to Americans affected by the virus.
  • The administration took action to provide more flexibility in unemployment insurance programs for workers impacted by the coronavirus.
  • The Treasury Department moved tax day from April 15 to July 15.
  • Trump signed legislation providing funding and flexibility for emergency nutritional aid for senior citizens, women, children, and low-income families.
  • USDA announced new flexibilities to allow meal service during school closures.
  • USDA announced a new collaboration with the private sector to deliver nearly 1,000,000 meals a week to students in rural schools closed due to the coronavirus.
  • The administration is halting foreclosures and evictions for families with FHA-insured mortgages.
  • The Department of Labor announced up to $100 million in dislocated worker grants in response to the coronavirus national health emergency.
  • The White House worked with the private sector to launch a central website where families, students, and educators can access online education technologies.
  • Trump signed legislation to provide continuity in educational benefits for veterans and their families who attend schools that have had to switch from in-person to online learning due to the coronavirus.
  • The Department of Education has given broad approval to colleges and universities to allow them to more easily move their classes online.
  • The Department of Education set interest rates on all federally-held student loans to 0% for at least 60 days.
  • The Department of Education announced borrowers will have the option to suspend their payments on federally-held student loans for at least two months.
  • The Department of Education is providing waivers for federal testing requirements to states that have had to close schools.

INFORMING THE PUBLIC

  • The administration launched a website – coronavirus.gov – to keep the public informed about the outbreak.
  • The president launched a partnership with the Ad Council, media networks, and digital platforms to communicate public services announcements about the coronavirus.
  • The president announced guidelines for Americans to follow and do their part to stem the spread of the virus.
  • The Task Force is holding nearly daily press conferences to provide the American people with the latest information.
  • The Task Force has recommended mitigation strategies to heavily impacted communities, like those in New York, Washington, and California.
  • CMS announced guidance to protect vulnerable elderly Americans and limit medically unnecessary visits to nursing homes.

SUPPORTING PATIENTS AND HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

  • In January, the administration declared the coronavirus to be a public health emergency.
  • The president donated his fourth-quarter 2019 salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for coronavirus response efforts.
  • The president took action to give HHS authority to waive rules and regulations so that healthcare providers have maximum flexibility to respond to this outbreak.
  • CMS is giving flexibility to Medicare Advantage and Part D plans to waive cost-sharing for coronavirus tests and treatment.
  • CMS created new billing codes for coronavirus tests to promote better tracking of the public health response.
  • The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinated with the NIH, the tech industry, and nonprofits to release a machine readable collection of 29,000 coronavirus-related research articles, which will help scientists discover insights to virus’ genetics, incubation, treatment, symptoms, and prevention.
  • The administration announced that health plans with health savings accounts will be able to cover coronavirus testing and treatment without co-payments.
  • CMS dramatically expanded telehealth for Medicare beneficiaries, ensuring more patients can access their doctors remotely while avoiding exposure.
  • HHS lifted HIPAA penalties to enable healthcare providers to expand telehealth access for patients.
  • The VA established 19 emergency operations centers across the country and put in place visitation restrictions to limit patients’ exposure.
  • CMS and the VA are working to limit nonessential, elective medical procedures to free up healthcare resources.
  • The Navy will be deploying two medical ships to help support impacted areas.
  • The president announced Carnival Cruise Lines will be making ships available for hospitals to use for non-coronavirus patients.

STRENGTHENING ESSENTIAL MEDICAL SUPPLIES

  • The president announced he is invoking the Defense Production Act.
  • The president signed a memorandum directing his Administration to make general-use face masks available to healthcare workers.
  • HHS announced it will be purchasing 500 million N95 respirators for the Strategic National Stockpile.
  • The Department of Defense announced it will be providing 5 million respirator masks and 2,000 specialized ventilators to assist.
  • The president signed legislation removing restrictions that prevented manufacturers from selling industrial masks – which can readily protect healthcare workers – directly to hospitals.

DEVELOPING VACCINES AND THERAPEUTICS

  • The administration is working to help accelerate the development of therapeutics and a vaccine to combat the coronavirus.
  • The FDA is evaluating existing drugs that could serve as potential therapeutics for coronavirus patients.
  • The administration is actively working with drug manufacturers to monitor any potential drug supply chain issues.
  • The administration is expanding research and consulting with experts to better understand the transmission of coronavirus.
  • The National Institutes of Health has announced the beginning of a clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine candidate.

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Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer Proposals

The following lists some of the laws and regulations the Democrat leadership  folded into the 1,432 page-long coronavirus-relief package proposed by House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.)

Diversity Initiatives

Amending FIRREA to Protect Financial Institutions Operated by Women

  • Section 308 of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 instructs the Treasury secretary to consult with the chairman of the FDIC’s board of directors to preserve the “number of minority depository institutions” owned by “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”That vague category has, according to the FDIC, historically included banks and other financial institutions owned by African Americans, American Indians, and members of other minority groups. Pelosi’s bill would expand Section 308 to cover banks and financial institutions in which at least half of outstanding shares are held by one or more women, or whose board of directors are majority-female.

    Given that women make up the statistical majority of the American population, it’s strange that House Democrats would seek to expand a law designed to support “minority depository institutions” to include them. It’s even stranger that they’d seek to do so in a bill ostensibly designed to provide relief to Americans facing a global pandemic.

Establishment of a “Minority Bank Deposit Program,” Federal Diversity Reporting Requirements
  • This section obliges the head of each federal department or agency to “develop and implement standards and procedures to ensure, to the maximum extent possible as permitted by law, the use of minority banks and minority credit unions to serve the financial needs of each such department or agency.”It would also require all federal departments and agencies to submit an annual report to Congress detailing the extent of their use of financial institutions owned by racial minorities and women. Whatever the merits of this idea, it, like the above proposed changes to Section 308 of FIRREA, does not belong in a coronavirus-relief package.

Diversity Reporting Requirements for Businesses Receiving Federal Aid

  • All publicly traded corporations receiving federal aid would, under the Pelosi proposal, be required to file quarterly disclosures to the SEC detailing their demographic “composition, including data on diversity (including racial and gender composition) and any policies and audits related to diversity.”All companies, publicly traded and privately held alike, that receive federal aid related to COVID-19 would be required to release a report “no later than one year after the disbursement of funds” disclosing the demographics of their employees, and including breakdowns by seniority and managerial status.

    They would also be required to report the demographic breakdowns of their supply chains, disclose data on the diversity of their corporate boards, and issue a “pay equity” report that disaggregates compensation data by race and gender. And “any corporation that receives Federal aid related to COVID–19 must maintain officials and budget dedicated to diversity and inclusion initiatives for no less than 5 years after disbursement of funds.”

    What the number of Hispanics in a given aid recipient’s supply chain or the presence of “inclusion initiatives” have to do with propping up the pandemic-battered economy remains unclear.

Restructuring Corporate Boards

Aid Recipients Must Allow Labor to Appoint One-Third of Corporate Board Members

  • All companies that receive federal aid related to COVID-19 would be required, under the House proposal, to appoint at least one-third of their board members through “a one-employee-one-vote election process.” In other words, if companies accept aid from the federal government at a moment when, because of a completely unforeseeable global catastrophe, demand has cratered in response to a lethal pandemic, the House bill would force them to completely upend their boards of directors to no conceivable end other than the fulfillment of a longstanding progressive wish.

Requiring States to Allow Same-Day Voter Registration

Amending the Help America Vote Act to Require States to Accommodate Same-Day Registrants

  • The Help America Vote Act was signed by President Bush in 2002. It helped to modernize the nation’s voting infrastructure by calling for the creation of computerized voter-registration rolls at the state level, constructing federal accessibility guidelines to accommodate voters with disabilities, and setting up the Electoral Assistance Commission to certify state voting systems.Pelosi’s coronavirus-relief bill, which ostensibly is intended to provide “relief” to businesses and individuals affected, directly or otherwise, by the coronavirus, inexplicably seeks to amend the Help America Vote Act, and, in so doing, upend state election protocols by requiring states to allow same-day voter registration.

    Twenty-nine states do not allow such registration. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia do. It is not clear that this divide need be resolved at all, much less that it ought to be resolved at the federal level. And it is completely unclear why such a provision has any place in an emergency economic-stimulus package.

Immigration

Prohibiting Institutions of Higher Learning from Disclosing the Immigration Status of Students

  • In a portion of the bill addressing the contingency protocols for the administration of the 2020 U.S. Census, the House bill includes a section on institutions of higher learning. The bill proscribes colleges and universities from disclosing “any information to the Bureau on the immigration or citizenship status of any individual” enrolled there. What this has to do with the coronavirus crisis, no one knows.

Deinstitutionalization

Reauthorization of Money Follows the Person

  • The House Bill extends the Money Follows the Person (MFP) program in Medicaid. A darling of deinstitutionalization exponents in Congress, MFP is a federal program designed to incentivize states to move the elderly and persons with intellectual disabilities out of “institutions,” such as Intermediate Care Facilities (ICF) and nursing homes and into “community” settings, such as group homes.The program is controversial, because despite its presentation as a “voluntary” initiative, it incentivizes states to close “institutions” that those with the most profound disabilities rely upon through an enhanced federal-matching arrangement. In Wisconsin, for instance, state officials began “identifying ICF-MR facilities to be downsized or closed” and created a bureaucratic morass to promote “alternatives to ICF-MR facilities.” Twenty-eight such facilities have been closed in the state since the start of the program, and more than 900 individuals they served have been relocated.

    When such closures are pushed from the state level on down — when state-run ICFs are closed or private ICFs are coaxed to “convert” their facilities into “community-based settings” with the guarantee of federal funds — individuals with disabilities and their families are left with little choice but to move.

    The renewal of Money Follows the Person deserves to be debated properly. It should not be smuggled into an emergency appropriations bill of this sort.

Environmental Regulations

Grant Program for “Sustainable Aviation Fuel”

  • Title VII of the House bill is devoted entirely to “environmental protections.” The title’s opening section calls for the institution of a “Sustainable Aviation Fuel Development Program.” The Transportation secretary would be given the power to disburse grant monies based upon the “potential greenhouse gases emitted from” an applicant’s project and the “potential the project has in reducing United States greenhouse gas emissions associated with air travel.” Two hundred million dollars would be appropriated annually to the grant program. The program’s relevance to the global pandemic is left unaddressed.

Mandatory Carbon Offsets for Airlines

  • Every airline receiving federal aid would be required to “fully offset [its] annual carbon emissions [from] domestic flights beginning in 2025.” Airlines would also be required to submit an annual report detailing their fealty to “a binding commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the domestic flights of such air carrier in every calendar year, beginning with 2021, on a path consistent with a 25 percent reduction in the aviation sector’s emissions from 2019 levels by 2035, and a 50 percent reduction in the sector’s emissions from 2019 levels by 2050.”
About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

March 25, 2020 @ 7:56 pm
Not Tired of Winning