Save the Country Coalition told reporters on a conference call this week that Congress should not bail out the mostly Democrat-controlled states that made bad decisions in responding to the coronavirus outbreak.

These states leaders — including the Democrat-run states of New York, California, New Jersey, and Illinois — are pushing for a “massive federal bailout,” Stephen Moore, chairman of Freedom Works Task Force on Economic Revival, said on the call.

“They want money for bad decisions to destroy their economic infrastructure … [that] threw millions and millions of their own workers out of their jobs,” Moore said.

“They want to underwrite the policies that they have been running for a long, long time,” Arthur Laffer, economist and former member of Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board, said on the call.

“It would be a huge mistake to bail out bad-performing states,” Laffer said.

“How many of us would just give people money and say, ‘You just spend it any way you want. I don’t have to review your budget,’” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said. “You wouldn’t do that in business. You wouldn’t do that with your personal life. We shouldn’t be doing that in our job as U.S. senators.”

Scott and Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) vowed to fight efforts to force taxpayers to reward states for failing to properly respond to the virus.

Those on the conference call also called for any relief package to include a payroll tax cut.

The Save the Country Coalition includes a number of fiscal conservative organizations, including Freedom Works, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Tea Party Patriots.

“Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats are pushing for a nearly $1 trillion aid package for the states and localities, which comes on top of nearly $250 billion that was already allocated as part of the $2 trillion CARES package,” Moore said in an announcement of the conference call.

“This would be the largest federal bailout of any government in U.S. history,” Moore said. “Blue state leaders have demonstrated poor fiscal judgment before and during the pandemic.”

“Red states by and large should not have to shoulder the tax burden of Pelosi’s plan nor should they be punished for fiscal competence,” Moore said. “Instead of a bailout, blue states would be wise to end lockdowns and implement pro-growth policies, like the payroll tax cut, to stimulate their economies.”

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