IN CASE YOU MISSED IT… Sen. Rick Scott in Fox Business: Stop Laundering Coronavirus Relief Money Through Inefficient Government Agencies and Give it Back to Taxpayers

August 5, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In case you missed it, Senator Rick Scott wrote an op-ed for Fox Business on how Congress should stop laundering taxpayer money intended for coronavirus relief through inefficient federal agencies or state governments. Instead, the best way to help Americans is to give them their money back through tax cuts.

In the op-ed, Senator Rick Scott wrote, “Here’s a novel idea as we discuss the latest phase of Congress’s COVID-19 response: rather than launder taxpayer money through inefficient and wasteful federal agencies or state governments with no concern for fiscal responsibility, let’s just give taxpayers their money back.

Think about it this way: even if you assume the high-end estimates for total Americans unemployed (40 million) and you remove the Paycheck Protection Program funding that kept workers on payrolls, the total spent by Congress to respond to this pandemic and help workers amounts to $57,000 per unemployed American.

Now, do you believe that every unemployed American – or any unemployed American – has received anything close to $57,000? Of course not, because the money Congress spent has been laundered through myriad federal agencies, state and local governments, and new entitlement programs with bureaucracies to go along with them.

Every dollar spent by Congress seems to be spent in the least efficient way possible. Why would we keep doing this?

And remember, Republicans and Democrats are negotiating a new spending bill of at least $1 trillion more without a full reporting or even understanding on if or how the $3 trillion already allocated has been spent. In fact, we know that some programs are still sitting on millions or even billions of dollars in unspent cash.

Washington has gone off the rails.

If we want to inject capital into the economy right now and boost liquidity for businesses and consumers, let’s do it in the most efficient way possible: give taxpayers their money back.…”

Read the full op-ed in Fox Business HERE.

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