It’s funny season again when candidates for the U.S. Senate make fools of themselves.
Take Jason Walton. He takes a picture in front of a beautiful desert landscape (without tourists in the background) and claims the place is unguarded and where most of the illegal drugs enter the U.S. Where are the smugglers? They are not there because most drugs smuggled into the U.S. enter through ports of entry via trucks, passenger cars and ships. Next time he wants to show how to solve the problem, stand in front of a semi.
The response to John Curtis’s ads is more complicated.
He is running against the “wasteful” spending by the Biden-Harris administration. He hopes the voters will forget the state of the U.S. economy in January 2021. When President Biden was sworn in, the economy was in free-fall. GDP was shrinking at the rate of 9%, worse than the “Great Recession” of 2007-2008. People were losing their jobs, couldn’t pay rent, mortgages or car payments and credit cards were in default. Many businesses were closing as demand for their goods and services vanished. The economy was headed for a crash.
The Biden-Harris administration — with the support of almost all Democrats and many Republicans — passed the COVID Relief Act. The act authorized spending $2.2 trillion. Spending authorized by the act boosted the economy, provided for payments to businesses to stay in business, pay their employees and keep the economy going. The act shortened the recession, put the economy into recovery and made significant gains against poverty, lack of health coverage and hardship.
The second major spending bill of the Biden-Harris administration is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The act includes provisions related to federal highway aid, transit, highway safety, motor carrier, research, hazardous materials rail programs, funding for broadband access, clean water and electric grid renewal in addition to transportation and road improvement. The legislation authorized approximately $1.2 trillion in spending. The previous administration annually held an “infrastructure week” promoting the concept. But never pressured Congress to pass one.
Utahns have been significant beneficiaries of both laws. It’s irresponsible to just say you’re against all this spending. My question to John Curtis is this: Specifically, which programs would you cut?
Michael McCoy, Cottonwood Heights
