'91 percent' of Democrats' $1.9T coronavirus bill doesn't address COVID recovery: Ernst

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Joni Ernst: 91 percent of Democratic COVID bill shouldn't have passed

Sen. Joni Ernst outlines her opposition to the $1.9-trillion Democratic coronavirus package, which passed the Senate without any Republican votes.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, blasted Democrats' $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, telling "America's Newsroom" that "91 percent" of the money doesn't go to supporting to pandemic-related recovery and will force Iowans to bail out blue-state pension funds.

No Senate Republicans voted for the massive package, which is expected to be approved by the Democratic-led House and soon go to President Biden for signature.

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SEN. JONI ERNST: "For heaven sakes, there was 91 percent of that bill that did not go to supporting Covid-related recovery, so 91 percent of the bill shouldn’t have passed. We really need targeted relief. That's not what we saw in this $1.9-trillion package. Iowans are in particular upset about the fact that they will be bailing out blue states that don’t manage their budgets, that have excessive pensions, and my taxpayers who manage their finances quite well will be the ones bailing out these poor blue states ...

There are a number of programs that will target certain populations, and yet our poor Iowa farmers won’t be able to apply if they are in a certain demographic, and so that is very unfortunate that we have singled out certain farmers and certain areas and not supported all farmers ... They hate this. It is very, very unfortunate that we have gotten to a point right now where we are not only forgiving the loans of certain demographics but paying them an additional 20 percent on top of that. Susan Collins and I had a lengthy discussion about her poor potato farmers in the state of Maine ...

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This was a really sneaky trick to put this in the bill. A lot of Iowans won’t see the benefit of most of these programs. Again, this is a Covid bill, not a farm bill. This was not a manufacturing bill. This is supposed to be a Covid-related bill. One percent of this bill goes to vaccinations. We need to be opening our economy. We need to be getting moms back to work, open our schools, and this bill does not do that."

Watch the full interview.