Earlier today, we reported on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making sure to bring to the public’s attention that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee was being very clearly used in by hacks as a partisan punishment tool. Republican officials seemed uninterested in actually pursuing any real oversight into federal COVID-19 pandemic funding across the country.
While it is always nice to watch Rep. Ocasio-Cortez work for the American people, she is not alone on the Committee, currently controlled by the Republican Party. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, fresh off pretending that Tyre Nichols’ death was both not racist and not a civil rights violation, decided to pursue her reality-warping world tour as a person allowed to talk into microphones, to ask about important questions of fraud.
Did she call for an investigation into the self-dealing Trump administration’s use of PPP loans? Nope. Did she demand investigations into Florida representatives who are suspected of fraudulently receiving PPP loans? No way, dude! She wanted to demand we figure out how much money was spent on elementary school “CRT classes” and drag story hours. Seriously. Just those two things.
The first two and a half minutes of Ms. Greene’s time was spent with her rambling about how she was happy to have taken a PPP loan (though she forgot to mention how that loan was forgiven while she was railing against student loan forgiveness). She also blathered about how everybody was hurt by COVID because of mask mandates, and how we have a big deficit, and how lots of money was spent on COVID relief, but she knows it was all wasted on secret globalist grooming events. Or some such madness that is not worth following.
She finally had a question for Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office. “Can you tell me, as our Comptroller of the United States, how much COVID cash was given to abortion?”
Mr. Dodaro said he did not know, but I can tell you how much: Zero point zero dollars. In fact, I believe the actual number is zero to the power of one-thousand zeroes. She points to the Republican talking point that Planned Parenthoods across the country reportedly received $80 million in PPP loans—like the one Marjorie was saying she was thankful for just a few minutes before.
Important question number two for Ms. Greene: “Can you tell me how much money COVID cash went towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, or racism issues?” Can you follow that? Mr. Dodaro couldn’t either and said he didn’t know. “Well, I can tell you the Pennsylvania Humane Humanities Council did receive 1.4 million and released and used it for equity and geographic diversity. I'm not sure how that helped in a pandemic time.”
A short reminder that Greene is something of a failed business owner, whose money came from her dad, and she offers next to nothing in the way of anything productive to humanity, let alone America.
She seems to be referring to the money handed out to 92 organizations under the Pennsylvania SHARP (Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan).
“The humanities are on the ground, putting people first, by making spaces for new voices, supporting meaningful learning experiences, and fostering healing and resiliency in communities of all sizes,” said Laurie Zierer, executive director of PA Humanities. “PA SHARP further strengthens this essential work through network building, financial support, and reimagining the possibilities of the humanities across the state.”
PA Humanities assembled a diverse team of 46 cultural professionals who reviewed a total of 337 applications — 41 percent of which were new applicants. The recipients represent museums, historical societies, libraries, and other vital cultural institutions in 30 counties across Pennsylvania. They were carefully selected with an emphasis on equity and geographic diversity. BIPOC-serving organizations represented 24 percent of the total grantees, and 23 percent of grants were to recipients in rural counties.
Important question number three! “Mr. Dodaro, can you tell me how much how much COVID cash went to CRT?” Mr. Dodaro looked absolutely perplexed. He seemed to have not even gotten the pretend memo about CRT being a thing in existence. At all. Rep. Greene was not deterred—she isn’t interested in answers to anything she says anyways, right? “CRT, Critical Race Theory and Education. It's a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin is not equal to black skin and other things that education [sic].” Yes, even her mind gave up at the end of that made-up sentence about CRT, and she phrased it “other things that education.” That … education.
Mr. Dodaro is doing his best not to say What the F are you talking about? and instead says, “I don’t know that. But I do know that there's provisions that the federal funds generally are not used. They're supposed to be used for curriculum.” Hehe.
It is here that Ms. Greene takes her biggest swing at the fence of make-believe, saying, “Oh, Mr. Dodaro, I have to tell you in Illinois that they received 5.1 billion. At at an elementary school there that used it for equity and diversity.”
You get that? $5.1 billion. To “an elementary school,” and used for “equity and diversity.” Now, as much as that would be absolutely an amazing thing if it happened, that isn’t even a thing anyone has ever even pretended to ask for. There are not enough feel-good drugs in the world that would get someone to give $5 billion—I mean $5.1 billion—to an entire state’s elementary school system.
For example, Illinois K-12 (that is all elementary, middle school, and high school) receives less than $2.4 billion a year in federal funding. Anyway. What she seems to be talking about is the fact that, like the rest of the country, states used some of the billions in pandemic relief towards reopening schools. Illinois is the same. However, searching up Ms. Greene’s bizarre $5.1 billion number only yields an article about the “Illinois Teachers Retirement System's investment staff informed trustees of up to $5.1 billion in commitments and investments in 26 traditional and alternative investment strategies from February to May this year during a June 16 board meeting.”
Finally, Ms. Greene offers up a final, serious, and important avenue of oversight that we must all spend more money on to make sure that money is not spent...again. “Can you tell me how much money was given to a drag queen story hour?” Dodaro has no idea what Greene is referencing here, and based on Greene’s explanation, neither does she. “Drag queen story time, where, where men dressed up as women and read confusing books to children.”
She then explains, falsely, “LGBT Community Center in Pennsylvania received $16,000 for drag Queen story time from COVID cash.” The LGBT Community Center in Pennsylvania was indeed awarded $16,000, and does occasionally host a Queer Story Hour on the weekends for people interested, but it is also a community center that does all kinds of things in its community. Also, $16,000 isn’t nearly the same as the more than $185K Ms. Greene pulled in from PPP loans. Dodaro tries to lighten the mood, saying “I thought you said dry-clean.” I mean, not sure what he’s supposed to say to a person who has less use to society than a book in Donald Trump’s TV room.
An important thing to remember about Ms. Greene is that she is a complete waste of taxpayer money and human resources. Beyond how offensive and ignorant and misinformed and bigoted, she is doing nothing and will continue to do nothing of worth on the committees she has been gifted.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
