Senate Tries to Inoculate the Economy
If there were ever a time America should be grateful for its businessman-in-chief, it’s now. The Left can say what it wants about Donald Trump, but the majority of people staring down this crisis have to take great comfort in the fact that the man at the helm was built to protect this economy. Even today, as the Senate dives into a third wave of relief, his expertise could very well make all the difference.
If there were ever a time America should be grateful for its businessman-in-chief, it’s now. The Left can say what it wants about Donald Trump, but the majority of people staring down this crisis have to take great comfort in the fact that the man at the helm was built to protect this economy. Even today, as the Senate dives into a third wave of relief, his expertise could very well make all the difference.
Dan Celia, who’s been a financial analyst for years, says he’s never seen anything like it. “It’s absolutely amazing what’s happening, what this administration is doing, and how fast they’re [doing it]… I don’t think we’re ever going to see anything like it again. It’s as if we have an administration that doesn’t have any politicians in it, because President Trump looking at this from a business perspective. ‘Hey, what do you need? We’ll get it for you. We’ll get rid of the obstacles. We’ll do it right now. Let’s pick up the phone. Let’s make a call. Let’s get it done. And there are the kinds of things that don’t happen in Washington that are happening right now. So it’s pretty amazing. But we’ve got a lot of work to do to keep this economy afloat.”
While the liberal media is turning the administration into a primetime punching bag, two of the most radical governors in the country — Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) and Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) — have nothing but praise for the president. “He’s on top of it," Newsom told reporters. On the opposite coast, Cuomo also surprised people with his insistence that the president is "fully engaged on trying to help New York,” and that his actions “more than prove that.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Republican James Lankford (R-Okla.) and others are working all hours to get a relief package done and out the door. Wednesday, on “Washington Watch,” he talked about some of the second bill’s highlights — and some of its pitfalls. Basically, he explained, the bill has three main parts. It deals with food stamps, unemployment insurance and extensions, and small businesses. To a lot of people, Senator Lankford included, that’s the most controversial part, because it would order these employers to offer paid leave for workers who are either sick or staying home to take care of their kids.
Now eventually, they would be reimbursed by the federal government — but that wouldn’t happen overnight. “And a lot of small businesses in my state have said, 'Whoa, I cannot float that much cash. I’m really having a tough time right now keeping my own head above water.’ They’re a local coffee shop, a local restaurant, or a local retail location. They’re having a hard time just maintaining their payroll right now at all.” On the bright side, there are senators with ideas for how to fix this in the third bill. Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have suggested rewarding small businesses who don’t lay people off with some kind of loan forgiveness. “That’s a very interesting, very creative [way to]… get help to small businesses, keep people employed — rather than pushing them out into unemployment — and also provide a lot of stability to those families.”
Of course, the Senate’s liberals are also thinking creatively — at least when it comes to exploiting the crisis. Wednesday afternoon, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) took a stab at reinserting the radical language on “domestic partners” that FRC helped scrub from the House version. Fortunately, our team caught it in time to send a warning letter to the Hill, letting senators know that Democrats hadn’t given up on hijacking the language. Ultimately, her amendment failed, 47-51, but it was certainly another example of how conservatives need stay vigilant in these fast-moving debates.
“They never miss an opportunity to try to rewrite the… culture in any kind of crisis moment,” Senator Lankford agreed. “A lot of us jumped in… to push back on that and to say, ‘No, this is this is not what this bill is supposed to be about’ and got all of that language stripped out, which was very helpful in the end.”
As for the relief effort in general, Celia says, Congress has to do it. “If we don’t, we’re in big trouble. The economy — not the market, the economy — is really going to fall off big time.” Yes, it’s tough to swallow another trillion dollars in spending, but as Dan points out, the country could be facing 20 percent unemployment in a matter of weeks. “So, when we speak about this, we ought to really be speaking about it as an aid package. I know the Left wants to frame it as stimulus because [of the negative connotations]. But this is about the American people… I had a big problem with the [2008 stimulus] and the bailouts and so forth. And obviously, I have problems with the national debt. But this is an aid package that has to happen. And it’s got to get done quickly, because in order to head off a real traumatic downturn in the economy, that’s going to take months and months to recover from.”
In the end, he assures everyone, this is temporary. “It’s hard to believe,” he said, but it is.
Originally published here.
More Churches Put Their Sunday Services in Park
Down in Odessa, Texas, dinner isn’t the only thing you can get by drive-thru — so is church! Starting this Sunday, March 22, a pastor is announcing a new service from the parking lot. It’s one of the many creative ideas congregations are trying to keep their church families safe and worshipping.
In a Facebook announcement, the Christian Church of Odessa said this new “Drive-In Worship” would give people the opportunity to stay in their cars and tune in to a radio station to the live worship and message. “We can sing, pray, and celebrate (with honks!) that God is with us. Hygienic communion will be offered at your window. The worship will be on our Facebook Livestream, and we encourage you to stay home and participate in this way if that is best for you.” Together as a board and pastor team, they met and decided that they didn’t want to give up in-person gatherings, but they also want to be “good neighbors, responsible citizens, and honor the guidelines from the CDC and health professionals.”
It’s a creative solution — one a lot of churches should consider replicating! Everyone has a parking lot, and pastors can either crank up the speakers, use Facebook Live, or even try some shortwave FM transmitters. The technology is out there — and so is the resourcefulness to make it happen. People can still congregate in vehicles on the church property, praying and singing together. And maybe you don’t pass the offering plate, but you give families an opportunity to make a contribution on the way out. That way, churches, which are critical partners in the response to any natural disaster, can continue to minister to the growing numbers of people in need.
And, as I’ve been telling our friends in the White House, that’s vital. Because, as we all know, the church is the government’s partner in ministering and helping the community. In fact, the administration is looking to partner more with the churches in this response — whether that’s delivering food or medicine. They know that the church is a critical part of serving the vulnerable, but right now, health comes first.
To those of you who wonder if the government and CDC are in cahoots to keep churches from meeting, I assure you they aren’t. If I thought anyone was trying to infringe on our First Amendment rights with these gathering guidelines, trust me. I’d be at the front of the line taking issue with it. But in spite of the virus, there are still ways to meet, minister, and be in compliance. And the Christian Church of Odessa — along with many others — is leading the way!
Originally published here.
SPLC More Concerned with ‘Hate’ Outbreak
If people are looking at a map right now, it’s for infection rates — not “hate” hotspots. Try telling that to the anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) who picked this week, during a global pandemic, to suggest that the biggest threat facing America is conservatives! Rather than help communities with the virus, SPLC seems determined to divide them — exposing, once again, where its real motives lie.
In an email about the new “hate” list, SPLC insists it is “guided by our concern for the health and safety of our staff and the communities we serve.” And yet, none of that seems to jive with the timing of a map that seeks to polarize the country when we can least afford it. “During this challenging time,” SPLC writes, “we are committed more than ever to continuing our fight for justice and pushing back against those exploiting this pandemic to further their radical agenda.” That’s interesting, PJ Media’s Tyler O'Neil points out, since the report “has nothing to do with correcting misinformation on the pandemic and everything to do with furthering the SPLC’s own radical agenda.
Obviously, the organization, whose racist and sexist scandals prompted a very public meltdown in 2019, hasn’t learned a thing from its phony internal review. After losing two of the group’s leaders to workplace complaints and other staffers exposing SPLC's money scam, the last several months should have been a time for real soul-searching. But if this latest attack on several conventional groups was supposed to help SPLC save face, it’s mistaken. The only thing this timing proves is how profoundly tone-deaf and opportunist the group is.
In the organization’s latest "hate” chronicles, SPLC manages to offend a number of mainstream organizations with its labeling, including a number of pro-family entities, which they dub “the fastest-growing sector of hate.” Of course, FRC — who knows better than anyone the danger this map creates — was also prominently featured in a picture of Pastor Andrew Brunson and me praying over President Trump at last year’s Values Voter Summit. Apparently, prayer is the new hate language. That’ll come as a surprise to the scores of national leaders encouraging prayer in these anxious and uncertain times. And yet, while the country cries out on its knees, SPLC is still busy trying to bring conservatives to theirs.
And they aren’t stopping with our generation. Let’s not forget, this radical, anti-Christian group is in our schools, infecting children with their decades-old “Teaching Tolerance” propaganda. Of course, we know that for the SPLC, the target is not “the intolerant” per se, but those who don’t share their Leftist worldview. And thanks to partnerships with the liberal National Education Association, SPLC has direct access to almost any public school. That means the ability to indoctrinate on gender identity, sexuality, social justice, abortion, immigration, and more.
We all have a stake in ensuring that this “hate-mongering scam,” as the Federalist so eloquently put it, is treated like the discredited disgrace that it is. Lives, as FRC learned in 2012, depend on it.
For more on what you can do about SPLC in the classroom, check out FRC’s guide, “The SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance: What Parents, Teachers, and Administrators Need to Know.”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
