Thousands of convicted inmates in Michigan were sent $3,200 stimulus checks, paid for by ARPA. New luxury apartments developed in Norwich, Connecticut were funded by ARPA dollars. The city of Chicago decided to spend $31 million to create a guaranteed income program in Chicago13 and the city of Philadelphia planned to test a universal basic income pilot program with $18 million from ARPA. Syracuse, New York approved a plan to spend $2 million of ARPA funds for planting new trees. On April 15, 2021, it was reported the Governor of New Jersey was considering using ARPA dollars to create a $40 million fund for the state’s 460,000 illegal immigrants.
The state of New York’s budget included a $2.1 billion fund for direct checks to illegal immigrants-suspiciously the exact amount of additional federal dollars they received from ARPA. Smith cited the following as examples of waste and abuse of COVID funding:
Simply put, this Administration's first request to Congress for COVID-19 dollars resulted in multiple, easily predicted instances of non-COVID related spending.4 What's worse, when asked to account for these taxpayer dollars or answer questions about their use, your Administration has remained silent. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been used to bail out state governments, and to build bike trails, new high school weight rooms, apartment buildings, and golf courses, to name just a few examples. Of the other 91 percent of the spending in ARPA – a bill supposedly about COVID-19 – rampant examples of misuse and waste continue to pile up. You can understand the frustration on the part of Americans as they realize that funds meant to go to testing capabilities were instead used by your White House to reward illegal immigrants. You marketed it to the American people as a bill to combat COVID-19, when in reality less than 9 percent of that bill actually went to public health spending to fight the virus.Īnd over the summer your Administration repurposed billions of dollars of that 9 percent – including $850 million meant to develop domestic COVID-19 testing capabilities – to deal with housing illegal immigrants at the southern border as a result of the historic border crisis manifested under your watch. In March, you used a partisan process to push through Congress via one party Public Law 117-2, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). It's absolutely reckless what this administration is doing, Maria,” the congressman said. “It's ridiculous, but what Biden did do out of $2 billion that was appropriated that was supposed to go towards COVID testing and to replenish the strategic stockpile, he sent that to the border to house illegal immigrants. It went to crazy items, $2 million to plant trees in Syracuse or $4 million for a parking lot in South Carolina, $1,400 to Japanese citizens in Japan, checks to prisoners, $16 million for a golf course in Palm Beach,” he said. "We don't really get to know each other anymore.“The $2 trillion that was spent back in March, the package that they said that was for COVID relief, you know Maria, less than nine percent actually went towards COVID spending and COVID relief, but that other 91%. We come in, we go straight to votes, and then we go to our separate quarters," he said. "I think we need to get our work done, and we're not getting it done now.
They said their schedules are more predictable, their time in Washington is more productive, and they're happier with their family time.Ĭohen, now in his fourth term, said while he enjoys the comforts of home, "I think we'd get more work done if we spent more time in Washington." Most members surveyed seem to be happy with a new schedule, instituted by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, which gives members frequent breaks to work in their districts. "Most people view Congress through the prism of C-SPAN and think that's what they're doing all the time." "One of the least important things they do is vote on final action on the floor - because so much of that is preordained anyway," Fitch said. The remaining time is taken up with constituent service, politics, fundraising, media relations and administrative work, according to the first-of-its-kind study. "Let's not mistake activity for achievement."Įven when in Washington, actual legislating - working with other lawmakers to draft laws, hold hearings and vote on bills - occupies only about a third of a member's time. "This is a study that looks at their work ethic, not their work product," he said. You're not looking at unmotivated, lazy people here," said Bradford Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, which conducted the study with the Society for Human Resource Management. "Is it a people problem or a process problem? It's possible it's not a people problem.
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