Coronavirus Spending

President Reagan once quipped that politicians and diapers needed to be changed often, and for the same reason.

The Alabama Legislature recently showed us why that’s true.

The State of Alabama received $1.8 billion in aid from the Federal government as a block grant. That money was supposed to help Alabama protect its citizens from COVID-19 and cover the costs and losses the state has incurred dealing with the disease.

But the Legislature decided that one of the desperately needed priorities was to build a new State House and asked for $200 million to build the new building (or just over a tenth of the total for the state). And instead of giving aid to people unemployed because of the virus, or small businesses who had laid off workers and were in danger of closing their doors for good, Legislators had a whole list of questionable spending, like $25 million for a robot technology park.

But they had good explanations, of course.  The new State House was needed because, well, the current State House is ‘unhealthy’. And, apparently, we are going to fight the current pandemic with robots.