U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) on Tuesday laid out his opposition to Democrats’ American Rescue Plan due to hundreds of billions of dollars of what he calls wasteful pet projects and spending unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News and again in a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Young pointed to “blue state bailouts,” a Silicon Valley subway, and Paycheck Protection Plan loans for Planned Parenthood as reasons for his opposition.
Sen. Young was one of 10 Republican Senators who met with President Biden on Feb. 1 to present what they called a more targeted COVID relief proposal, and he has been outspoken on the need for the next COVID-19 relief package to be bipartisan.
Young
“What we should not do in the United States Senate is pass this so-called American Rescue Plan – $1.9 trillion, which 90 percent of which has nothing to do with health-related expenditures,” Sen. Young said during his interview on Fox News. “In fact, we need to focus on just a few things. We have got to get our kids back to school, we have to get people back to work, and on top of all of that we have to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.”
Later Tuesday, Sen. Young reiterated his concerns on the Senate floor, highlighting the bill’s price tag and other provisions unrelated to COVID relief contained in this package.
“There is no doubt that some Hoosiers and many Americans are still hurting. We can and we will and we must help those people,” Sen. Young said on the Senate floor. “But President Biden and the national Democrats’ so-called American Rescue Plan is not the way to do it … We are not going to just let national Democrats cram unrelated policies into what should be a bill squarely targeted at the crisis. We need a bill just like the five bills that we passed in a strongly bipartisan fashion just last year.”