Policy Issues / Woke and Weaponized

Primer: The Reconciliation Ruse to Radically Transform America (Part 2)

by CRA Staff

October 4, 2021

Overview

The Democrat-controlled Senate and House of Representatives passed a colossal $3.5 trillion FY2022 budget resolution last month, along partisan lines, that would radically transform the United States. Budget reconciliation instructions were then provided to congressional committees so they could begin crafting these radical big-government policies.

The top ten radical policies of the bill were included in a recently-released analysis. However, as the proposal has fully come together amid intense congressional debate following various committee reports, the Budget Committee’s legislative text has revealed even more radical policies embedded in its nearly 2,500 pages.

Below, you will find ten more radical provisions that are being proposed in the reconciliation ruse.

11. Federal Bailout for Journalists

In an unbelievable move, Sec. 138517 of the reconciliation bill contains a provision that can only be described as a taxpayer-funded federal bailout for “local news journalists” through a payroll tax credit. This bailout would total well over $1.2 billion according to analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, with each eligible journalist receiving up to $50,000 annually for the next five years.

Those eligible to receive this credit are only required to work 100 hours per quarter, or about 10 hours per week. While it’s being pitched as “relief” for local news journalists, any publisher with up to 750 employees is eligible for this credit.

The practical impact of this provision is even greater politicization of the media with local journalists placed on the taxpayer dole. This will further disincentivize the press from holding the government or government-run programs accountable when they receive a pay increase, in some cases surpassing 100 percent of their existing salary, from the government. 
The entire purpose of a supposed “free press” protected by the First Amendment is to hold the government accountable to the people. This provision effectively creates Pravda in America, with the press fully entrenched as an arm of the government.

12. Critical Race Maternity Care

The reconciliation bill outlines a proposal that would infuse and promote radical Critical Race Theory (CRT) into maternity care and health care training. In Section 31042, $150 million is allocated in the form of taxpayer-funded grants for the express purpose of providing scholarships to health care workers who provide maternity care in areas considered to be experiencing a health professional shortage.

As part of this $150 million, the federal government is empowered and explicitly tasked with “developing curriculum for students seeking to enter careers focused on maternal and perinatal health that includes training programs on bias, racism, or discrimination.”

An additional $25 million in this section is solely dedicated to CRT training for nonprofits, accredited schools of medicine, and health training programs to “reduce discrimination and bias” in the provision of health care.

Maternal mortality rates vary by state, region, age, health status, education level, culture, and ethnicity. There are myriad reasons for this tragic reality, almost none of them having to do with a mother’s skin color. However, brainwashing health care professionals to view their field through the prism of racial oppression and to link maternal mortality rate disparities with racial essentialism will have enormous negative consequences for health care in America and the social cohesion of the nation.

This policy will have three negative effects of enormous consequence: 1) It will fail to identify the underlying issue properly and therefore fail to mitigate maternal mortality rates. 2) It will transform health care and maternity care workers into radical race-focused ideologues. 3) It will lead to a rationing of care and a lowered quality of care predicated on the color of a patient’s skin, policies which are already being proposed by radical CRT activists.

13. Electric Vehicle Charging Stations “Equity” Program

The reconciliation bill includes over $1 billion for the development of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in “underserved” areas, specifically areas near or accessible to government housing. 

Fewer than two percent of all personal and light duty vehicles in the United States are electric vehicles with nearly 50 percent of all EVs located in California and Washington state. The average cost of an EV as of 2019 was $55,600 with data showing increased maintenance and auto insurance costs for the consumer compared to gas-powered vehicles.

According to the left-leaning Urban Institute, the average household income for those living in government housing is $14,444, meaning the average cost of an EV is four times the annual income of those this “equity” program is intended to “benefit.”

The eligible entities that can receive these EV “equity” grants include non-profit organizations, public housing authorities, utility companies, and incredibly, anyone else the secretary wants to include at his or her discretion, thus ensuring this taxpayer slush fund lines the pockets of well-connected interests without actually serving the communities it claims it will.

14. Vaccine Mandate Fines on Private Employers

As part of the Biden administration’s authoritarian efforts to force private companies to force their employees to get vaccinated, the reconciliation bill includes up to $700,000 in fines for employers that “willfully” or “repeatedly”  violate a section of labor law that regulates hazardous conditions, death, or physical harm to employees.

This fine would be imposed for each alleged infraction.

Despite the fact that many states have already passed state laws prohibiting businesses from being liable for COVID-19-related sickness, the administration seems intent on bankrupting companies through unconstitutional mandates on the private sector.

There are an estimated 80 million Americans who work for companies that the administration’s mandate would impact, constituting nearly 50 percent of the entire workforce.

15. Federal Manipulation of Community Development

Section 40105 of the reconciliation bill creates a new $7.6 billion program called the “Community Restoration and Revitalization Fund” that would allow the secretary of housing and urban development to award taxpayer-funded competitive grants to community development programs, non-profits, and housing organizations in areas where there are “disparities” in racial and ethnic home-ownership rates.

The pretext for this new program is rooted firmly in the administration’s efforts to promote so-called “fair housing” initiatives. This program would empower HUD bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., to make neighborhood and housing decisions in cities, suburbs, and localities that they have never visited by allocating taxpayer funds to like-minded entities at the local level.

The Supreme Court ruled in Fisher v. University of Texas (2013) that “racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.” The reconciliation bill not only ignores this ruling, but attempts to implement such policy through budget reconciliation under the guise of a new program.

16. Bailouts to Insurers for Unaffordable Obamacare Plans

The reconciliation bill, in Section 1351, includes $10 billion in additional annual subsidies to health insurers for “reinsurance” to continue to prop up the failing and unaffordable Obamacare exchanges.

Americans have seen their health insurance costs more than double since Obamacare was implemented in 2013, with some states seeing costs triple. Big insurance companies, meanwhile, continue to reap record profits as their relationship to big government strengthens.

Instead of bailing out insurance companies to continue funding corporate profit margins at the expense of Americans struggling to afford the so-called “Affordable Care Act’s” high-cost, low-quality plans, Congress should be removing regulatory barriers in health care to restore the doctor-patient relationship, lower costs, and improve care.

17. Environmental Justice Grants to Make the Poor Poorer

Section 136601 of the reconciliation bill establishes “environmental justice” credits for eligible educational institutions to the tune of $1 billion per year over the next decade. The legislation defines “environmental justice” as programs designed to address or improve data on “environmental stressors” in low-income areas for the purpose of improving health and economic outcomes.

In effect, the budget bill uses taxpayer funding to subsidize the education of elites to earn credits in a made-up curriculum to become activists for policies that will increase energy costs in low-income areas of the country. 

18. Radical Gender Theory for Baby Boomers

As part of the reconciliation bill’s funding in Subtitle F for various community support programs, the legislation allocates $15,000,000 for “technical assistance centers” and “national resource centers” that provide unspecified services for aging Americans that are deemed to be “underserved” due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Many of the programs in this section are designed under the Older Americans Act to provide job training and community engagement support for senior citizens. It appears that Congress is now intent on expanding radical gender theory through a multimillion dollar bureaucratic slush fund to a population that overwhelmingly supports the reality that biology is immutable.

19. Solar Panel Slush Fund Disguised as Community Improvement

The reconciliation bill includes a $2.5 billion Green New Deal program for “low-income solar power” in Section 30483 of the legislation. The intent of the funding is to assist “disadvantaged” communities in both planning and installing solar panels to power their neighborhoods and homes.

The threshold for what constitutes a low-income household is any household at or below 80 percent of the median income in the area of 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

The reality is that the taxpayer funding will go directly to utility companies, non-profits, state and local governments, and installation companies to offset the increased costs of solar energy. A study out of the University of Chicago in 2019 found that in the 29 states that had implemented a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) the increased electricity cost to consumers totaled more than $125 billion.

Furthermore, solar power is simply less reliable than traditional energy sources like natural gas and coal and contributed greatly to Texas’s blackouts during the February 2021 arctic storm. Solar and wind energy simply lack the storage capacity of traditional, more reliable forms of energy. And, as Texas found out the hard way, the more one’s grid relies on renewables, the more vulnerable it is to weather events when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

This proposal will only foist unreliable and costly sources of energy on the most vulnerable populations in the name of radical climate activism.

20. Universal Basic Income Disguised as EITC Expansion

The reconciliation bill greatly expands a program rife with fraud and abuse known as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC is a refundable tax credit program that was originally designed for low-income parents with children. It has nevertheless grown into the second-largest means-tested program in the federal government.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that about one-quarter of all EITC payments (which totaled $70 billion in 2020) are fraudulent payments.

In Section 137401 of the legislation, the EITC is amended by lowering the eligibility age from 25 to 19 years old and eliminating the previous age cap of 65 years old. 

Furthermore, the bill vastly expands the income and phase-out amounts for childless adults. 

Specifically, it more than doubles the credit percentage to 15 percent for childless adults, where the previous number was 7.65 percent. It also more than doubles the earned income threshold from $4,220 for a single adult worker to $9,820 and raises the phase-out threshold to $11,610 from its previous figure of $5,280.

This provision is a backdoor attempt to begin implementation at the federal level of the socialist left’s Universal Basic Income schemes, essentially guaranteeing expanded EITC fraud and greatly disincentivizing low-wage workers age 19 and older from pursuing upward mobility.

Conclusion
The budget reconciliation package remains in flux and is undergoing negotiations for a relatively smaller trillion-dollar figure. However, this bill remains little more than a far-left wish list for the ruling class—a set of extreme policies designed to further ensure hard-working citizens are subservient to a bureaucratic elite determined to centrally plan the lives of American families while enriching themselves with power and control.The reconciliation proposal, whether it becomes $1.5 trillion or remains $3.5 trillion, is reckless, radical, and aimed at fundamentally reshaping the United States through one-party fiat. The reality is that this legislation will cost far more than advertised. It is imperative that these measures fail in order to prevent policies from being enacted that will further discord, political polarization, and social fragmentation.