Cotton: Democrats Using Coronavirus ‘as an Excuse to Fill a Lot of Longstanding Liberal Priorities’

Monday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) decried tactics used by Democrats to get “liberal priorities” passed into law by using the COVID-19 pandemic as justification.

The Arkansas Republican lawmaker said it was part of an effort from Democrats to bring back earmarks, as demonstrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) priorities.

“I think we know now why the Democrats decided to make this a partisan bill,” he said. “They didn’t want to cooperate with Republicans even though we worked on a bipartisan basis last year to pass five bills and spent almost $4 trillion to help our country get through this pandemic. It’s because they want to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to fill a lot of longstanding liberal priorities. If you recall, Nancy Pelosi did this last March. She put the brakes on a bill that ultimately passed unanimously, but we had to spin our wheels for a couple of days because Nancy Pelosi wanted money for some of the exact kind of things you just mentioned.”

“I mean, like what does mass transit in San Francisco have to do with a global pandemic?” Cotton added. “It has nothing to do with it. It only has to do with Nancy Pelosi getting an earmark for her district, which this bill does across the country, bringing back earmarks of the kinds that Republicans have banned for a decade, so we don’t have more bridges to nowhere.”

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