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Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming voted against President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, despite the fact residents of her own state are receiving the highest individual share of relief.
"The people of Wyoming do not want to be in a position where our taxpayers are having to bail out governments, in states like California and New York, that have not conducted themselves in a responsible manner," Cheney said to Axios.
On Wednesday, the House passed the American Rescue Plan on a vote of 220-211, with all Republicans and only one Democrat voting against the bill. Biden is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday.
California, Texas and New York are the three states with top shares of the relief plan, with Wyoming ranking at number 10 with $1.3 billion of the relief. But Wyoming residents are bound to receive $2,350 each—the highest share of the package's funding per resident.
The pandemic has hit the state's economy hard. Wyoming had a 5.2 percent unemployment rate by the end of last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Sharp drops in oil prices at the start of the pandemic shut companies down and caused layoffs in a state that produces 40 percent of U.S. coal, NBC News reported.
Tourism, another one of the state's main industries, dropped over 50 percent in the spring of 2020 versus that time in 2019 as national parks closed due to the virus, according the Wyoming Department of Administration & Information.
Some of the few visitors to the state were extremely wealthy people who took refuge from the pandemic at luxury retreats in towns like Jackson Hole, NBC reported, using private health care sources. Meanwhile, the majority of the state's rural population struggled to make ends meet and were not consistently able to access medical services.
"I think that, from an economic perspective, the damage that this massive new spending is likely to do is something that's going to be significant and with us for a long time, and is probably going to make it harder — not easier — for us to recover from the impact of COVID," Cheney said.
Despite the much-needed aid the legislation will give to Wyoming residents, Cheney told WyomingNews.com that the relief bill "did more than harm than good." She argued that the bill breached bipartisan consensus by lacking Hyde Amendment protections, which prohibit the use of federal funds for abortions, according to a March 10 statement provided by Cheney's spokesperson to Newsweek. Cheney said she feared taxpayer money would be going to Planned Parenthood.
"The bill provides stimulus checks for illegal immigrants, criminals, and even terrorists, while focusing just 9 percent on defeating the virus," Cheney said.
Democrats have abandoned nearly 45 years of bipartisan consensus by leaving Hyde protections out of their $1.9 trillion spending bill. They are using this bill to pass their anti-life agenda.
— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) March 10, 2021
This is wrong. We must stand up for the most vulnerable among us.
According to PolitiFact, a small percent of the bill will be allocated to directly fight COVID-19 through vaccine distribution, personal protective equipment, and support for health care providers. While the rest of the bill isn't specifically set aside for treating and preventing the virus, the other taxpayer dollars in the bill are designated to help businesses and residents, such as those in Wyoming, cope with the financial losses caused by the pandemic.
"I will continue to fight for the people of Wyoming and for the common sense solutions we know that the country needs to get through this pandemic," Cheney said in Wednesday's statement. "Unfortunately, the Speaker and her party are more interested in ramming through their dangerous policy agenda that's bad for the nation, proving, once again, why they cannot be trusted to govern responsibly."
This story has been updated to include comment from Cheney's spokesperson.
