She does have a history of dealing with pork.
Todd Starnes, the best-selling author and host of the “Todd Starnes Radio Show,” blasted Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and her Republican colleagues for “bowing” to Senate Democrats’ demands on the coronavirus stimulus bill at the expense of the taxpayer.
Starnes pointed to an interview that the senator had with radio station KXEL in Waterloo, Iowa.
Program director Jeff Stein read a tweet from Starnes’ Twitter account that asked what the point was of having a Republican-controlled Senate if it would pass a $2 trillion bill loaded with so much pork.
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Starnes said Ernst made her name in the Heartland by running ads talking about her childhood and how she castrated pigs on the farm where she was raised. Starnes said the only ones that got castrated last night were the “American taxpayers.”
Ernst, in the interview, claimed that Republicans in the Senate were successful in denying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demand for new emission standards for airlines and Green New Deal provisions, but she said that to get the bill passed and money into the pocket of millions of desperate Americans. She joined other Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, who admitted that the bill was not perfect, but had to get passed.
“Anybody who is nickel and diming out there, good, we want to be fiscally responsible,” she said in the interview. “But certainly in a time like this, when America is at a crisis point, we need to make sure that we’re getting that relief out.”
Starnes, who also called for relief for small businesses and medical facilities, said Ernst, like other Republicans, sold their souls by allowing a bill that should have been very specific to snowball into a trillion-dollar monstrosity.
“So for her to secure the (unanimous) vote, she admitted that she had to sell her soul and she sold all of us taxpayers right down the river,” Starnes said.
He also criticized how she downplayed the bill’s significance as “nickel and diming.”
“That’s a lot of nickel and diming, lady,” Starnes said. “Two-trillion-dollars worth of nickels and dimes.”
The Senate late Wednesday passed the historic spending bill that both parties praised but admitted giving up some ground in the compromise. The bill passed in a 96-0 vote and significantly increases unemployment insurance to laid-off workers and industries impacted by the virus outbreak.
Pelosi seemed to support the bill in a late-night statement and President Trump called it a win for America. Three million Americans filed for unemployment last week.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, praised the bill’s bipartisan effort, according to NBC News.
“From arguably the most partisan, divisive thing you could possibly do to coming together entirely, 100 of us, to meet this challenge, I think, says a lot about the United States Senate as an institution, our willingness to put aside our differences and to do something really significant for the country,” he said.
Starnes, who said he once liked Ernst, repeated his question: “What is the point of a Republican majority in the Senate if they’re going to act just like the Democrats and bow down and bend over every single time the Democrats want something.