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U-S Senator for Oklahoma James Lankford gave a fiery speech ahead of a possible upcoming vote on Democrats’ proposed 1.9 trillion dollar COVID bill. Last year, Congress approved five bipartisan relief bills in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last relief bill, passed two months ago, has yet to be spent by federal agencies like N-I-H and C-D-C.

Lankford pointed out that this bill only allocates one percent of its proposed funds to vaccines with another five percent going to public health. Despite 350 billion additional dollars for cities and states in this bill, Lankford says revenue for all 50 states combined only went down point-one-percent last year. You heard that right: a tenth of a percentage point. Lankford says one city in Oklahoma just reported their sales tax revenue actually increased during this pandemic 20 percent over last year.

·        Lankford’s speech by the numbers

o   On March 27, 2020, Congress passed the $2 trillion CARES Act package.

o   In 2020 unemployment soared to 15%+ across the country

o   The unemployment rate today is 6.7%

o   1% of this package actually goes to vaccines.

o   5% of this package actually goes to public health.

o   95% of the funding for schools ($170 billion) in this package—won't even be spent this year at all.

§  For reference, the total budget for the entire Department of Education this year is $66 billion.

o   $350 billion of the package goes to cities and states for pension bailouts, etc.

§  But revenue across the entire United States—all states—is only down 0.1% from last year.

§  And one city in Oklahoma last week reported sales tax revenue is up for them 20% because people are staying home and shopping more so the tax revenue is actually coming back to cities and states.

§  California gets $27 billion out of this package, but California's revenue actually went up last year.

o   CDC has used only $3 billion of the almost $9 billion that Congress previously gave them for vaccine distribution—$6 billion remains unspent.

§  CDC has only spent $20 billion of the $37 billion allocated for vaccines, treatment, and development and testing

o   In December Congress allocated $26 billion for agriculture, and $24 billion remains of that $26 billion, so only $2 billion has been used so far.