Rep. Elise Stefanik gives a victory speech on election night, Nov. 3, 2020, at the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls. (Provided photo — Christopher Lenney, Watertown Daily Times)

North Country U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik again voted against the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act, a COVID relief bill proposed by President Joe Biden and passed by Democrats in Congress. She called it a “partisan package guised as COVID-19 relief.”

Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, voted against this bill two weeks ago, but after the Senate made amendments it returned to the House, where Stefanik voted against it again Wednesday. The bill now awaits Biden’s expected signature.

“Rather than focusing on bipartisan COVID-19 relief to safely re-open our economy and schools, (House Majority Leader) Nancy Pelosi, (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer, and President Biden instead rammed through a partisan $1.9 trillion spending package stuffed with their Far-Left wish list.”

The bill, which has been openly debated since Feb. 2, has been heralded by supporters hopeful it will recover a nation crippled by the pandmeic, but Stefanik said the bill is unfocused and sticks taxpayers with a “nearly $2 trillion dollar bill.”

Stefanik said less than 9% of spending goes toward public health measures, and that more than a third of funds won’t be spent until 2022 or later.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I successfully delivered billions of dollars in funding to the North Country and supported multiple, bipartisan packages,” Stefanik said in a statement.

She said funding vaccine research, development and distribution; supporting small businesses, schools, hospitals, farms and families; and reopening the economy were her goals. She said the Democrats’ bill should have focused “on distributing the $1 trillion that remains unspent from previous bipartisan COVID-19 packages.”

She said Pelosi accepted less than 1% of amendments proposed by Republicans.

Among those, Republicans tried to include language blocking prisoners and undocumented immigrants — whom Stefanik calls illegal immigrants — from receiving stimulus checks.

Not all prisoners will receive stimulus checks — only those who file their taxes.

People who have overstayed their visas will only get stimulus checks if they pay taxes using a Social Security Number.

Millions of undocumented immigrants living in America pay their taxes each year using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security Number. Unlike in previous COVID aid proposals, they will not be eligible for stimulus checks, but if their children are citizens and have SSNs the children can get stimulus checks. Also, citizens married to undocumented immigrants can receive checks.

Stefanik also said Democrats shot down amendments which would have “held states accountable for underreporting nursing home deaths, invested in workforce development and expanded rural child care options.”

The first of these would target New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration for months did not disclose all COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents.

Stefanik said the bill would cut Medicare for seniors in 2022. This is possible but not guaranteed. An Obama-era law dictates that spending increases and tax cuts adding to the national deficit automatically trigger cuts to programs a year later. However, the Senate can override these cuts with 60 votes — so currently 50 Democrats and 10 Republicans.

Stefanik said she voted against the bill because it would continue federal unemployment benefits through September, which she says will “disincentivize getting people back to work.”

Republican lawmakers wanted an amendment to block abortion clinics from accessing emergency loans, citing the Hyde Amendment, which outlaws federal tax dollars from directly funding elective abortions. This proposal was denied, and it not being included was one of Stefanik’s reasons for voting against the bill.

Other reasons Stefanik gave for voting against the bill was that she said it would “fund companies, colleges and universities with Chinese Communist Party partnerships; provide zero funding for workforce development programs; not require schools to re-open for in-person learning; send billions of taxpayer dollars overseas for foreign aid programs; and create burdensome, unnecessary barriers for families in need of childcare.”