As cheap political stunts go, Massachusettes Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s latest one may surpass all others. On Feb. 27, the struggling presidential candidate and former Native American announced her intention to introduce a bill that would completely defund the construction of the southern border wall, diverting all funds instead to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and USAID to contain Coronavirus – officially named COVID 19.
By now, it is painfully obvious that Democrats and their loyal media minions are doing their level best to infect the public – and the markets – with outright panic over Coronavirus. Apparently, they assume the disease presents them with a golden opportunity to dismantle President Trump’s most potent weapon in the contest for the White House: a rampant economy and the optimism it has given a majority of Americans.
Dems Abandon Leadership Responsibilities
While the threat posed by COVID 19 should not be downplayed, it hardly portends the zombie apocalypse. Democrats, though, would do anything to prevent a second Trump term – including crashing the U.S. economy. In times of potential civil crisis, one would expect the nation’s political leaders to come together, put politics aside and assure the public that everything is being done to mitigate the danger. The president’s political enemies have no interest in doing so, to their eternal shame.
Sen. Warren has come up with a new twist on the gross politicization of the outbreak: “Coronavirus poses a serious health, diplomatic, & economic threat, & we must be prepared to confront it head-on,” she tweeted Thursday, “So I’m introducing a bill to transfer all funding for @realDonaldTrump's racist border wall to @HHSGov & @USAID to combat coronavirus.”
Warren’s Quest for Campaign Cash
The two-page bill, introduced in the U.S. Senate, is nothing more than a stunt, though, and has little chance of passing or even being brought up for a vote. It is more about the senator’s flagging campaign to win her party’s presidential nomination than about combatting the spreading virus. On her Senate webpage, Warren is quoted as saying:
"[W]e must be prepared to confront [the coronavirus disease] head-on. Rather than use taxpayer dollars to pay for a monument to hate and division, my bill will help ensure that the federal government has the resources it needs to adequately respond to this emergency."
Elizabeth Warren (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Warren goes on to explain that this transfer of funds would serve as “a down payment of an estimated $10 billion” to combat the possibility of a large-scale Coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. If this is just the down payment, one assumes the senator believes tens of billions more dollars will be needed. For what, exactly, she does not clarify.
What Warren hopes for, no doubt, is a speedy transfer of funds into her campaign coffers before Super Tuesday on March 3. A top-three finish in the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29 is practically a must if Warren is to keep her presidential hopes alive. That prospect is vague, at best. The latest Monmouth University poll puts the senator at 8%, which is seven points behind billionaire Tom Steyer, who is in third place behind Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Without a cash infusion or a strong showing in the Palmetto State, Warren is unlikely to have the money needed to take her campaign into the 14 Super Tuesday states.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
