Only in the fevered brain of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could things like forcing the airlines to be carbon neutral, making sure Planned Parenthood qualifies for small business assistance, cancelling the Postal Service’s debt, and requiring nationwide same-day voting be seen as a proper and valid response to the Wuhan Virus crisis that is crushing our economy and killing our people.

People are dying, both from the disease of and the depression and anxiety caused by looming mortgage payments, job loss, and watching their retirement funds built up over a lifetime evaporate. Pelosi wants to make sure boards of corporations assisted in any relief measure are sufficiently diverse and that federal employee unions are given expanded collective bargaining rights. Meanwhile her dawdling increases the death rate from suicide as despair overtakes hope among those who watch their livelihoods and futures slip away. It is likely that more Americans will die from economic anxiety and hardship that from the virus. Poverty kills and so does Nancy Pelosi and her political boy toy Chuck Schumer. Parenthetically, can anyone imagine Harry Reid letting Pelosi telling Senate Democrats what to do?

Americans are dying as we speak because Nancy Pelosi remembers Rahm Emanuel’s adage that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and exploits a global pandemic to achieve her liberal agenda:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s newly announced "relief" proposal, titled the “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act,” cancels the U.S. Postal Service's $11 billion in debt and gives it $20 billion in cash. It mandates that the head of each federal department or agency “shall submit to Congress a report on the actions taken to increase the use of minority banks and minority credit unions to serve the financial needs of each such department or agency." It empowers the newly proposed COVID–19 Aid Oversight Panel to collect data on “employee demographics,” “supplier diversity,” “pay equity,” and “corporate board diversity" for any organization that receives federal funds in connection with the coronavirus pandemic….

The Speaker’s “relief” proposal makes early voting available in all 50 states. It mandates that each state must allow same-day voter registration. It has an entire section titled, “Federal employee collective bargaining and official time," referring to taxpayer-funded unions. It requires that airlines fully offset their carbon emissions. It contains new rules for improving “consumer information regarding release of greenhouse gasses from flights.”…

Early voting? Student loan forgiveness? Offsetting carbon emissions? Bailing out the post office? Policing “corporate board diversity”? These have nothing to do with preventing further economic ruin or COVID-19-related deaths. They are merely items on the Democratic Party's wish list -- issues that excite their left-wing base.

Americans want relief from the Chinese Wuhan virus and Pelosi offers them nothing but Green New Deal pork and carve-outs to key Democratic constituencies. Her goody bag will not cure a single virus patient. It will not resurrect a dying economy. Thank God we elected President Trump, who got our economy going to the point it could survive, at least so far, the impact of this global pandemic. Thank God President Trump imposed a travel ban on a lying and perfidious China while Democrats like Joe Biden were calling him racist and xenophobic. In January, Trump was busying saving American lives while the Democrats were trying to impeach him.

Democrats worry about power and not the American people. They want to control our lives and not save the lives of Americans. Can you imagine what the burden on our tottering health care system would be currently if we had open borders and Medicare for all, including illegal aliens?  Interestingly, Pelosi’s pork-filled pandemic bill, which in includes tax credits for solar panels and wind farms to help fight the virus, also includes some $300 million for foreign refugees under the heading “Department of  State: Migration and Refugee Assistance,” to address  hardships affecting illegal aliens breaking into our country. So much for a bill supposed to protect American citizens, American workers and American lives:

The package calls “for an additional amount for ‘Migration and Refugee Assistance'" of $300 million to "remain available until expended, for necessary expenses to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus: Provided, That such amount is designated by the Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”

As Democrats get the recession they prayed for, they want to help it along by burdening the economy with wasteful and expensive junk from their gift bag. They saw an opportunity over the weekend as multiple GOP senators either testing positive for the Chinese virus or were quarantined after possible exposure. Reduced GOP numbers gave Democrats the opportunity to put the squeeze on in pushing their agenda while the economy collapsed and people worried whether they would see tomorrow:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) worked to scupper the phase-three coronavirus relief package on Sunday after Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told caucus members last week that the bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz observed in response:

The famed quote from Rahm Emanuel, that’s President Obama’s chief of staff: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ Sadly, we’re seeing the embodiment of that cynical approach right now,”… “Because with all the people out of jobs, the Democrats are using this to push -- what are they pushing for? Changing the emissions standards on airplanes,” Cruz said. “What the hell do the emissions standards on airplanes have to do with thousands to people dying and millions of people out of work in the coronavirus epidemic?”

It is Pelosi and the Democrats who stand in the way of restoring health to both the American people and the American economy that has provided them the highest standard of living on earth. Democrats are willing to hold our lives hostage and put them at risk to pursue their worthless socialist agenda. They are the pandemic we should fear and fight.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.