Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) argued for his proposed bill that would restrict federal government money appropriated in the name of coronavirus relief from going to state or city government that give payouts to illegal immigrants.
“[W]e shouldn’t be spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on illegal immigrants at a time when 35 million Americans are out of work,” he said. “If we are going to be giving relief checks to those people who are out of work, we need to focus on American citizens, not illegal immigrants.”
Cotton also emphasized other efforts to decouple the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain from China and other foreign nations. While many pharmaceuticals are manufactured in the United States, the source material is often imported from abroad.
“[I]t is a tragic irony that the country that unleashed this pandemic on the world also controls many of the most basic pharmaceutical ingredients for the United States,” Cotton said. “That does have to stop. I’ve got legislation that would give incentives to build more manufacturing capacity right here in the United States and ultimately ban the import of pharmaceuticals from China, many of which are adulterated, to begin with.”
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