New Hampshire taxpayers shouldn’t be too upset with Sen. Maggie Hassan and her colleagues for voting a COVID-19 relief check to the convicted murderer of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs. Our congressional delegation did a lot worse than that.
The non-pandemic spending in this Biden pork package contains a $350 billion giveaway to state and local government, and it awards far more to some of the nation’s richest enclaves than it does to the New Hampshire peasants that our delegation presumably serves.
None of this spending is needed. But if you are going to spend just shy of $2 TRILLION in borrowed money, naturally Beverly Hills should get $6.3 million, Greenwich, Ct. $21 million, and the poor, shivering folks of Key West another $10.1 million.
This is all spelled out in a state-by-state breakdown at the OpenTheBooks.com website. Unlike the last relief efforts, which awarded money based on a state’s population, this one does so based on unemployment rates, which just happen to be higher in blue (Democratic-control) states than in red ones.
But we doubt that too many town selectmen or city mayors in New Hampshire will squawk much. The amount of money about to be showered from Coos to the sea is staggering and wholly unrelated to dealing with the receding pandemic. Let the good times roll, until the debt comes crashing down.