Last night, the Senate finally passed Phase 3 of the Coronavirus Stimulus Relief Bill with a unanimous vote of 96-0.

FoxNews.com reports that

The final bill text will use 2019 tax returns, if available, or 2018 tax returns to assess income for determining how much aid individuals receive. Those who did not file tax returns can use a Form SSA-1099, Social Security Benefit Statement or Form RRB-1099, a Social Security Equivalent Benefit Statement.

The bill would provide one-time direct payments to Americans of $1,200 per adult making up to $75,000 a year, and $2,400 to a married couple making up to $150,000, with $500 payments per child.

Gone are mentions of mandatory early voting, ballot harvesting, requirements that federal agencies review their usage of “minority banks,” and provisions curbing airlines’ carbon emissions — a Pelosi demand that even Saikat Chakrabarti, the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and an author of the Green New Deal, called “ridiculous.”

“What’s not in the Senate’s bipartisan coronavirus bill: Pelosi’s outrageous wish list,” wrote GOP national spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington. “0 mentions of ‘diversity.’ 0 mentions of ’emissions.’ 0 mentions of ‘early voting.’ 0 mentions of ‘climate change.’ Good!”

At the same time, the bill satisfied some Democrat policy goals. Page 524 of the bill text indicates that many businesses that take a government loan would be obligated to remain neutral in any “union organizing effort” during the loan — a major giveaway to unions. Affected businesses would have between 500 and 10,000 employees.

Also in the final bill text, $25 million would still be allocated for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. President Trump, speaking at the White House coronavirus briefing earlier Wednesday, said that he understood the provision was necessary because Democrats demanded some concessions in order to get the stimulus bill passed.

Pelosi was the first to demand the money in her own bill, which Republicans said was full of unseemly payouts for well-connected special interests at a time of national crisis.

The Kennedy Center put out a statement Wednesday evening saying it was “extraordinarily grateful that Congress has recognized our institution’s unique status and has included funding in its legislation to ensure that we can reopen our doors and stages as soon as we are able.”

“For an opera house, you sure are tone-deaf,” responded blogger Jim Treacher, after telling the Kennedy Center where to shove its statement.

Aside from direct payments to most Americans, the bill would expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home.

The movement came as stocks posted their first back-to-back gains in weeks, but much of Wednesday’s early rally faded as the hitch developed in the Senate. The market is down nearly 27 percent since setting a record high a month ago.

Amid the debate, presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders said he might try to torpedo the Senate’s stimulus package. Republican senators dropped their objections about what they called a “massive drafting error” related to unemployment benefits.

“In my view, it would be an outrage to prevent working-class Americans to receive the emergency unemployment assistance included in this legislation,” Sanders said in a statement, also posted on social media.

“Unless these Republican Senators drop their objections, I am prepared to put a hold on this bill until stronger conditions are imposed on the $500 billion corporate welfare fund to make sure that any corporation receiving financial assistance under this legislation does not lay off workers, cut wages or benefits, ship jobs overseas, or pay workers poverty wages,” he continued.

Sanders took to the Senate floor late Wednesday at approximately 9:30 p.m. ET to say he was concerned that the administration would be able to “expend $500 billion in virtually any way they want” under the legislation. In fact, the administration would not have such unilateral control.

…The package is intended as relief for an economy spiraling into recession or worse and a nation facing a grim toll from an infection that’s killed nearly 20,000 people worldwide. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, asked how long the aid would keep the economy afloat, said: “We’ve anticipated three months. Hopefully, we won’t need this for three months.”

Underscoring the effort’s sheer magnitude, the bill finances a response with a price tag that equals half the size of the entire $4 trillion annual federal budget.

“A fight has arrived on our shores,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “We did not seek it, we did not want it, but now we’re going to win it.”

One of the last issues to close in the bill concerned $500 billion for guaranteed, subsidized loans to larger industries, including a fight over how generous to be with the airlines, given that Democrats wanted to restrict their carbon emissions. Hospitals would get significant help as well.

“There is a whole concern in our country that if we’re giving tens of billions of dollars to the airlines, that we could at least have a shared value about what happens to the environment,” Pelosi said Tuesday.

But, support for Democrats’ climate-change push in the stimulus bill withered Tuesday. The former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Saikat Chakrabarti, wrote on Twitter in response to Pelosi’s comments: “I helped write the #GreenNewDeal and I think this is ridiculous. The tiny little emissions standard increase doesn’t even do anything meaningful to stave off climate change and gives the @GOP leverage to get rid of real help for working people. Solve the problem at hand. Hospitals would get significant help as well.”

Why is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi so skittish about signing this bill which will actually help average Americans, including her constituency?

Well, it is reported that behind the scenes, Pelosi is catching a lot of flak from the Social Justice Warriors in the House, including AOC and the rest of the Squad.

That would explain why the bill which she wrote had so much money going to special interest groups and projects which have nothing to do with the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic.

According to Brian Darling, writing for Townhall.com in a post published on Tuesday…

One member of ‘The Squad’ wants to use the Pelosi produced ‘stimulus’ bill to eliminate banks. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the leaders of the Democratic Socialists in the House, wants Pelosi to insert legislation into the stimulus to damage America’s banking system. Tlaib’s bill, the Automatic BOOST to the Communities Act, would provide a pre-loaded $2,000 government issued debit card to every person in America with a new $1,000 deposit every month until a year after the passing of the coronavirus crisis.

Needless to say, that “brilliant” plan did not make it into the final bill. Thank God.

The Democrats are being destroyed by a monster of their own making.

The Democrats arrogance has become their undoing.

Their erroneous belief that they are the smartest people in any room they walk into has caused them to believe that the majority of Americans believe as they do, embracing he politics of Marxism and the “diversity” of special interest groups.

They learned nothing from the night of November 8, 2016.

And now, their own Trump Derangement Syndrome coupled with the “Democratic Socialist”/SJW Movement, is dividing and slowly consuming the Democratic Party from within, as the Democratic Elite like Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Chuck Schumer are dong whatever they have to in order to hold on to their power within their own party, by appeasing Social Justice Warriors like the Squad.

Unfortunately for the Democratic Elite, their party has moved so Far to the left of the Political Spectrum that average Americans have no respect left for them whatsoever.

And, nominating an almost 80-year old man struggling with the onset of Dementia as their 2020 Presidential Candidate will not help the Democrats regain the trust of the American voters at all.

And, if they dump Biden for Cuomo, American voters are going to have a problem with his Liberal arrogance and the fact that he supports late term abortion.

If the alcoholic Speaker of the House can temporarily stop her two remaining brain cells from fighting to the death and achieve a moment of clarity, she will realize that she must make sure that the Phase 3 Coronavirus Stimulus Relief Bill passes when it is voted on this Friday morning…

…or the Democratic Party will go the way of the Whigs.

Which, at this point, would probably be a good thing.

Until He Comes,

KJ