Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) says it’s total BS that the Progressive-Democrat proposed $1 trillion in Federal Wuhan Virus stimulus monies aimed at State and local governments would benefit public sector unions. Whether public sector unions should or should not benefit is a separate matter.
It’s generous, though, to suggest that such an intelligent woman actually misunderstands.
Adding a trillion dollars—or any other amount of money—to a budget means—work with me, now—that budget has those added dollars to spend. Earmark the trillion for specific purposes, or bar it from being used for public unions. Do that by sending the money as cash and tracking serial numbers. That still lets the recipient government move a different [trillion] of dollars from a different part of its budget to benefit its public unions. That’s the fungibility of money. It can be moved around.
Then the Senator said this in all seriousness:
We need to fund government so that we can continue to grow the economy….
Here are the Constitutionally authorized reasons for funding the government:
to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
Nothing in there about “growing the economy,” not even under that general Welfare part. What is the general Welfare of the United States is explicitly defined by the clauses of the rest of Article I, Section 8.
Indeed, as has been demonstrated over the course of our history and across a broad range of nations, the way to grow the economy is to have a free market, capitalist economy with minimal government involvement.
In fine, the State and local governments don’t need the stimulus money; they need to step back, (in many cases) end the lockdowns, and let the private economy function.