What to cut in virus relief bill? Plenty
Winter Park commissioners approve zoning code change for showroom, service center
President Joe Biden has challenged those who oppose the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion bill disingenuously dubbed “COVID relief,” or the more deceitful “American Rescue Plan.”
“What would they have me cut?” he asks. Challenge accepted.
Even The Washington Post editorial board thinks the spending is too much and misdirected: “...concerns about the bill’s costs are growing across the political spectrum.”
With COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths decreasing, with vaccines promised to be widely available to the general public by July, and with possible herd immunity coming soon, the best stimulus to the economy would be to open up businesses, allowing people to return to work while practicing health and safety measures.
Many who received money from the government the last stimulus go-round banked the checks and spent little or none of it.
The Post editorial also notes that money targeted to state and local governments don’t need it. It references Moody’s Analytics examination of state finances, which “shows that 31 states have enough money ‘to fully absorb the economic stress of COVID-19’ without substantial budget cuts or tax increases.”
That’s just for starters. Pork doesn’t even begin to describe the unrelated COVID-19 spending.
As The Wall Street Journal has noted, most of the House bill has less to do with the virus and more to do with paying lobbyists and other groups favorable to Democrats.
There’s another $7.2 billion for paycheck protection, which again would be less expensive and possibly unnecessary if businesses were allowed to reopen. When this money runs out and businesses are still mostly closed will there be more spending, adding to the already unsustainable debt?
There’s $86 billion to rescue 185 pension
plans, which, as the Journal notes, have been “chronically underfunded due to lax federal standards and accounting rules. Yet the bailout comes with no real reform.”
That’s the thing about so many government programs. They never have to fix a problem, only demonstrate good intentions so politicians can save their careers.
Public elementary and secondary schools, most of which remain closed thanks to teachers unions that wish to extract even more money for themselves, without returning to classrooms, are targeted to receive $129 billion. Schools don’t have to reopen to get the money, despite the science, which Biden promised to rely on, that says young children are least likely to become infected. The
Congressional Budget Office has said that Congress previously authorized $113 billion for schools, but that most of that money has not been spent.
There’s plenty more, including massive amounts of cash for programs favored by Democrats.
In addition to Planned Parenthood, notes the Journal, included are billions to defray premiums for the Affordable Care Act, $39 billion for child care, $30 billion for public transit agencies, the $15 an hour minimum wage, which may lead to more layoffs and fewer hires, $1.5 billion for AMTRAK, a bridge to Canada (not to be confused with Alaska’s notorious “bridge to nowhere” some years ago), and as the CBO notes, “$500 billion grants to fund
activities related to the arts, humanities, libraries and museums and Native American language preservation.”
If not properly cooked, pork can be infected with trichinosis, a disease caused by a small parasitic worm. That seems a good analogy when it comes to the “parasitic” congressional worms infecting our economy with nonstop spending of money we don’t have and borrowing that can’t continue without causing serious economic harm.
Nations of the past have not been able to survive massive debt. What makes us think we can?
or lost in
McLaren Orlando convinced Winter Park commissioners on Wednesday to change the city’s zoning code and allow it to sell luxury cars in a major corridor.
Vehicle sales in Winter Park are limited to small areas of land on the north side of the city, but McLaren plans to convert a shuttered hardware store on Orlando Avenue into a showroom and service center for its cars.
City commissioners voted 4-1 to approve McLaren’s request that adds conditions to the zoning code for “Vehicle Sales Showroom,” a category it argues is different from typical car dealerships.
McLaren’s vehicle inventory, which starts around $250,000 and runs up to about $2 million, is not displayed in rows outdoors and test drives are by appointment only. In Florida, the company has sales centers in Titusville, Tampa Bay, Miami and West Palm Beach.
McLaren faced a lot of opposition to transform the 2.4 acre site that has been vacant since Orchard Supply closed in 2018.
The city’s planning and zoning board denied its proposal, due to concerns that creating new language could allow other vehicle sellers to ask for the same exception.
Two neighborhood associations were divided on the issue and wrote letters to commissioners. Townhomes At Harper Place supports McLaren moving in and said people often sleep behind the vacant building and the landscape
is overgrown.
Orwin Manor Westminster Association asked the city to deny McLaren’s request because of pedestrian safety issues and noise pollution.
All commissioners said they support McLaren setting up in Winter Park but were torn on changing the zoning rules, so they tabled the issue in January.
Since then, the company tweaked some of the language in its proposal, which previously referred to it as a “specialty transportation business.”
The request for changing the city’s zoning text came with strict criteria: Inventory is limited to 25 vehicles, the showroom and service center must be housed inside the building and sales hours are during the day.
The company said its “low volume” sales approach doesn’t require many parking spots so it will turn about 22,000 square feet of the lot into green space.
Commissioner Todd Weaver, the lone vote against approving McLaren’s request, pushed for the company to choose another location within the approved areas of the city.
“I love these cars just as much as most people who would buy these cars and the first instinct you have is to run off on the throttle,” Weaver said. “I just don’t think this area is appropriate for that with the amount of traffic and the amount of residential neighborhoods around.”
Some commissioners and city staff said they preferred that McLaren request a change to the city’s land use plan and remove the geographic boundary on vehicle sales located north of the 17-92 corridor.
But McLaren’s lawyer, Mary Doty Solik, told commissioners that the company has a contract to purchase the property and can’t wait the up to nine months that process would take.
City commissioners are set to give final approval of McLaren’s request at a meeting next month.