It’s a good thing President Joe Biden signed the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan earlier this year because states are showing just how much they needed that money.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts, for example, has revealed just how valuable this money is — by wasting it on pork. About $8.7 billion in American Rescue Plan funding went to Massachusetts, with the state itself receiving $5.3 billion. Now, it has an American Rescue Plan spending bill worth nearly $4 billion in the Massachusetts Legislature with broad approval from Democrats and Republicans alike. All it needs is Gov. Charlie Baker’s signature, or an override if he vetoes it. If you look closely at the bill, you will see many absurd earmarks.
It includes money for local sports fields. Democrats and Republicans are both guilty of sneaking these kinds of provisions into the bill. State Rep. Michelle Dubois, a Democrat, got $250,000 into the bill to improve a grass soccer field in her district, while state House Minority Leader Brad Jones, a Republican, got $500,000 into the bill for replacing the turf at a high school’s football field in his district. Those are just a couple of the many field improvements in the bill.
The bill also takes federal funding and spends it on monuments. State Rep. Smitty Pignatelli got $75,000 into the bill to build a monument dedicated to Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman in Sheffield, Massachusetts. She was the first enslaved black American to file and win a freedom suit in the commonwealth. She’s an important historical figure, but funding new statues is not a vital function of the government.
Wasting money on monuments is nothing new for the commonwealth. Its fiscal 2022 budget allocated $200,000 for a statue of Marvin Hagler, a boxer from Brockton. DuBois and state Rep. Gerry Cassidy, Brockton Democrats, were behind that one.
And since Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the country, there is also woke funding in the bill. It provides an additional $200,000 in taxpayer funding to the left-wing NAACP thanks to state Rep. Russell Holmes. And state Rep. Liz Miranda added $100,000 to the bill to expand the Racial Equity and Justice Institute at Bridgewater State University; the school isn’t even in her district — or in Boston, for that matter.
And state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante of Gloucester rammed in $175,000 to help with the cost of the 400th-anniversary celebration of Gloucester in 2023. COVID-19 crisis averted.
These people could have gone with funding for clean water, roads, and first responders in their respective communities. Instead, they put it to waste and showed why the American Rescue Plan was unnecessary in the first place. It’s unfortunate that the federal government ran up the deficit for this garbage.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
