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Washington, DC - Congressman Steven Palazzo (MS-4) today voted against the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act. This bill was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,815-page attempt at another coronavirus relief package and was drafted behind closed doors without input from the entirety of the House of Representatives. The legislation is estimated to cost American taxpayers $3 trillion. 

"Speaker Pelosi hijacked this relief bill and trashed it with her liberal wishlist, confirming she is out-of-touch with the American people. When our own citizens are desperate for relief and a working economy, her legislation only incentivizes individuals to stay on unemployment and provides bail outs to illegal immigrants while raising tax burdens on our small businesses. This bill falls unbelievably short of what is necessary to get America back up and running."

More Details on the Legislation
-Allows illegal immigrants to receive direct stimulus payments because the bill strips the requirement for social security number verification.

-Mandates blanket release for certain covered federal prisoners and alleged criminals while imposing a high burden for the government to prove they present a risk of harm to society upon release.

-Extends $600/week unemployment insurance through January 31, 2021, plus a transition to allow the supplement to continue through March 31, 2021, for those who have not exhausted their benefits, meaning businesses will be competing with unemployment benefits for workers through spring of 2021. 

-Radically expands Phase 2 paid leave employer mandates by extending the mandates for an extra year, applying them to all employers, including small businesses, allowing more categories of leave to be compensated, and subjecting small businesses to lawsuits for alleged violations. 

-Federalizes elections by including stringent mandates on how states must run elections, including early voting, no ID requirement for in-person voting, same-day registration, and no-excuse vote by mail in addition to providing absentee ballots to all registered voters without restrictions on ballot harvesting.

-Provides 100% subsidy to cover an individual's premium costs for COBRA continuation coverage or a furloughed worker's employer-sponsored coverage premium costs without protections to ensure that no federal funds are used to provide abortion services. 

-Expands Obamacare through a new Special Enrollment period, a provision already rejected by the White House.

-Repeals State and Local Tax limitations for 2020 and 2021. 

-Uses taxpayer dollars to bail out failing multiemployer pension plans while failing to include any needed reforms that would actually fix the problem.

-Imposes a one-size-fits-all Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) run on all employers.

-Fails to include Hyde protections in the state and local funding, so nothing would prevent this money from being used from subsidizing the abortion industry. 

-Provides $10,000 of blanket student loan forgiveness for all public and private loans.

-Virtually rewrites the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) policy and permanently disallows rulemaking pertaining to work requirements and eligibility.

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