Biden COVID Relief: The Most Scandalous Provision of the $1.9T Relief Bill

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE

I
f you were to design a legislative provision outrageous enough to inspire another Tea Party-style political uprising, you would be hard-pressed to do better than section 5111 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief clunker is full of items with perverse incentives (long-term unemployment top-offs and blue-state pension-fund bailouts) and others that are just obviously injurious (a federal minimum-wage hike which the Congressional Budget Office says would cost 1.4 million jobs). But nothing quite compares to its “Emergency Federal Employee Leave Fund” for the righteous indignation it should arouse in most Americans.

The provision sets …