Louisiana, the home state of Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), has been walloped by the spread of coronavirus. However, he’s not on board with federal expenditures for the sake of spending money in the name of combatting the deadly illness.
Kennedy was particularly critical of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) overtures for spending more money, deeming it “spending porn.”
“Number one, I’m not interested in any more of Speaker Pelosi’s spending porn, or any other member of Congress, for that matter,” he said. “Number two, we just spent, with the leverage, $4 trillion. We ought to see if it works. Number three, with the leverage, we just spent $4 trillion. That’s not Louisiana ditch water we’re spending, that’s taxpayer money. That’s 4,000 billion dollars. We have to pay it back. We borrowed it.”
“And unless you were — unless you were — you were — you were throwing the Frisbee in the quad during Econ 101, deficits matter,” Kennedy continued. “So I think we need to slow down here and — and be mindful of what we’re doing and let’s see if what we just did works. I think it will if we can get the money out to people. The IRS has got to do its job, but our unemployment compensation programs have to do their job too.”
The Louisiana Republican insisted it would require more than “throwing money” at the problem.
“I’m not blaming anybody,” Kennedy added. “We’re going to beat this thing. But we’re going to have to do it together. And we’re not going to do it just throwing money at it.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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