The Garbage Out is easily summarized: the Progressive-Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Wuhan Virus “relief” bill that the House is putting its finishing touch on and then will send to the Senate.

The garbage going in:

• $350 billion for state and local governments, cities, and counties. Progressive-Democrats also changed the funding formula to ensure most of the dollars go to blue states that shutdown their State economies—to the detriment of neighboring States as well as to their own
• $86 billion to bail out 185 or so multiemployer pension plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Never mind that these so-called plans have been badly underfunded since their inception by both the employers and the unions that created them
• $129 billion for elementary and secondary schools, whether they reopen for classroom learning or not. Never mind, either, that most of the funds allocated by CARES remains unspent—or that of these new $129 billion isn’t scheduled to be spent until years later

And this garbage:

• $50 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency
• $39 billion for child care
• $30 billion for public transit agencies
• $19 billion in rental assistance
• $10 billion in mortgage help
• $4.5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program
• $3.5 billion for the program formerly known as food stamps
• $1 billion for Head Start
• $1.5 billion for Amtrak
• $4 billion to pay off loans of “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers
• nearly $1 billion in world food assistance.

Never mind that of these $162.5 billoin, only the FEMA money might have utility. The rest of it is utterly unnecessary for anything other than vote-buying. The “needs” implied here would disappear were the States to reopen their economies and the Federal government to get out of the way so businesses could operate and Americans go back to work.

And this raw sewage:

• $15 an hour minimum wage

Never mind the business- and job-destroying (to the tune of 1.4 million jobs) nature of such a mandate.

• an increase to the child tax credit to $3,000 from $2,000 ($99 billion)
• expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit to certain additional childless adults ($25 billion)

Which wouldn’t be necessary were Government out of the way and our State and national economy reopened.

Even earmarks:

• $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge connecting New York to Canada
• nearly $500 million for, as the CBO puts it, “grants to fund activities related to the arts, humanities, libraries and museums, and Native American language preservation.”

But this is what the Progressive-Democrats are demanding. Watch Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) vote these up because they’ll vote up the overall $1.9 trillion bill, along nakedly partisan reconciliation, for all their pious sermons about requiring bipartisanship on all bills.