Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., right, leaves a lengthy closed-door meeting with the Democratic Caucus at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020. Speaker Pelosi is expected to appoint House impeachment managers and transmit the two articles of impeachment — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — by the end of the week. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

They just can’t help themselves.

In the face of a declared pandemic, you’d hope that Democrats in the House could put together a decent, clean bill that addresses only immediate issues dealing with the response to the Wuhan coronavirus. That seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation for people who are trusted to do what’s best for the country. But nope, instead of looking to pass something with bi-partisan support that doesn’t contain contentious provisions, Nancy Pelosi decided to do what she always does. Namely, load the bill up with unrelated pork and abortion funding.

How bad is it? Here’s a thread laying out some of the details.

paid sick leave mandate: all employers have to provide 7 days of regardless of size FOREVER. With added days IF COVID19 relates. Plus carve outs for missed work completely unrelated to the virus (e.g. domestic violence, etc). — Johnny (Joey) Jones (@Johnny_Joey) March 12, 2020

The last thing this country needs is to start destroying small businesses that are already cash strapped in the midst of this crisis. But Democrats want to not only mandate largely unaffordable giveaways during the Wuhan virus outbreak, they want to mandate it forever. Your average business owner with 5-10 employees simply can not afford to give 14 paid sick leave (not mentioned in the above tweet, but that’s one of the provisions) to their employees during a pandemic, plus another 7 days of paid leave in non-emergency situations. That’s insanity. Heck, most businesses with 50-100 employees can’t even afford that. If the Democrats succeeded in their quest, it would absolutely tank the job market.

It keeps going though.

– mandatory OSHA emergency standards specifically for coronavirus. Besides being heavily burdensome for the small businesses who need RELEIF now, it wouldn’t be effective for the current situation. Making today’s victims pay for tomorrow’s preparation doesn’t fit the goal. — Johnny (Joey) Jones (@Johnny_Joey) March 12, 2020

Social security is already broke. Taking yet more money from it is not only irresponsible, it’s immoral. People have been paying into that fund their entire lives. To now steal their money to fund some Democrat pet project is nuts. Further, such a scheme wouldn’t even be functional until after the pandemic has passed. This is yet another attempt to create a new entitlement by taking advantage of a crisis situation. It’s disgusting and disgraceful.

The new OSHA standards are just another example of Democrats placing burdensome, unworkable regulations on business owners already drowning in red-tape. Doing so would cost people their jobs, which would then cause them to have draw from these new entitlements Pelosi wants to create and solidify. See the cycle?

Of course, a Democrat bill wouldn’t be a Democrat bill without trying to shoehorn in abortion funding as well, because that’s going to help stop coronavirus or something.

NEW: Multiple WH officials tell me that Nancy Pelosi sought to include a provision into the coronavirus stimulus that would set a precedent for up to $1 billion in mandatory health spending outside of protections outlined by the Hyde Amendmenthttps://t.co/qmrfmPdGsb — Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) March 12, 2020

Democrats do not see this pandemic as a serious issue. They see it as a chance to further transform the country into a welfare state and to defeat Donald Trump. The brazenness with which they are operating to achieve those goals would be hard to believe if it weren’t so expected these days. This would be a good time to have a media that wasn’t so in the tank, as they should be calling out this garbage and demanding Democrats pass a clean, non-partisan bill that helps us contain and stop this virus sooner rather than later.

The President should give another national address lambasting this attempt to play politics with people’s lives. Pelosi and company need their feet held to the fire. This isn’t a time to try to gain the upper hand politically. It’s a time to do what’s right for the American people.

Front-page contributor for RedState. Visit my archives for more of my latest articles and help out by following me on Twitter @bonchieredstate. Read more by Bonchie