Economy
Pelosi Blames McConnell For Stimulus Delay, Gives Trump An ‘F’ For Preparedness

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for delaying the passage of additional stimulus funding amid the coronavirus pandemic and gave President Donald Trump an “F” for his handling of the crisis, during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday.
“Mitch McConnell likes to say we delayed the bill, no, he delayed the bill. Two weeks ago, he came to the floor and said this is all we’re doing just the 250. Democrats were reunited in the House and Senate,” Pelosi said. “The Senate Democrats went to the floor and said no, no to that, we have a better idea about hospitals and testing and more funds for all of the businesses, the lower shall we say unbankable small businesses.”
She continued, “So we were very pleased that he finally came around to the fact that we had to go forward with this. So he was the one wasting time. I say that because I keep hearing him say we delayed, no, he delayed. But here we are and we’re ready to go on to the next bill and help our heroes.”
Senate Republicans and Democrats passed a bill to provide an additional $500 billion to the CARES Act. The bill allocates over $322 billion for the Payment Protection Program that ran out of funding last week. It also gives $60 billion to small businesses, $75 billion to hospitals, and $25 billion to ramping up coronavirus testing.
Pelosi added, “There’s a boy scout saying ‘proper preparedness prevents poor performance.’ Well, that was exactly why the President gets an ‘F.’ He was not properly prepared, not with the truth, with the facts, or the admission of what was happening in our country. Delay, whatever, delay, denial, death, instead we’d like to see him insist on the truth and we must insist on the truth with him.”
I’m proud of Congress’s new bipartisan agreement. I am just sorry that Democrats shut down emergency support for Main Street in a search for partisan “leverage” that never materialized.
It’s time to move forward together and get this done for the American people. pic.twitter.com/cUkQU0MT9P
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) April 21, 2020
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell applauded the bipartisan agreement on the Senate floor Tuesday, however, he said, “It’s unfortunate that it took our Democratic colleagues 12 days to agree to a deal that contains essentially nothing that Republicans every opposed.”
McConnell added, “In my view, it’s indefensible that Main Street small businesses and their workers had their assistance cut off for partisan leverage. That was the word of choice for one leading House Democrat “leverage.” The American people cannot be political “leverage.” So I am glad we’re now poised to move ahead.”

Economy
San Francisco gas-furnace ban will gouge residents and strain vulnerable electric grid

Progressive California is digging itself deeper and deeper into a literal energy crisis. Last week, twenty members of the Air Quality Management District “approved the plan to phase out and ban gas-powered systems that emit nitrogen oxide, or NOx, and that contribute to air pollution. Three board members were absent, and one member abstained” writes National Review.
The ban will phase out the sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters in Northern California. As a result, it will “be costly for residents, will further burden an already stretched electric grid, and will have minimal environmental impact” energy experts and economists told National Review.
“The move is emblematic of California’s approach to energy, which involves ramping up the demand for electricity while gutting the state’s ability to meet its electricity needs,” they said.
Specifically, it is “a regressive policy that’s going to increase costs in a state that is already unaffordable, it’s going to do minimal in terms of reducing [greenhouse-gas] emissions, and it’s going to stress a problem that we already have no plan of addressing, which is [that] our grid is going to be unable to provide reliable electricity,” said Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at the California-based Pacific Research Institute who is studying the state’s electricity shortfall.
Winegarden said California already has a major housing-affordability problem. “And now we’re going to make it even less affordable,” he said. While there are state and federal incentives and subsidies for people to purchase and install electric heating systems, Winegarden, an economist, called it a “shell game.”
“Subsidies don’t get rid of the costs,” he said. “They just redistribute the costs.”
The board’s vote did not address natural-gas stoves because it doesn’t regulate indoor air pollution, notes National Review. However, earlier this year, the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering restrictions, and possibly a ban, on natural-gas stoves.
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