In a viral video of Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon standing in front of the White House, the newly-elected Pennsylvania democrat lists all of the things we could pay for instead of funding the border wall.
This week the government entered a partial shutdown with no end in sight as lawmakers go home for the holidays. The shutdown comes over the impasse in Congress over President Trump's request for $5 billion to fund the border wall with Mexico.
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The White House has allegedly scaled back its request, but there's no official word on what that might be, according to USA Today.
In her video that has now gone viral on social media with more than 60,000 retweets, the 7th district representative lists off other funding projects that could use that kind of money.
Here's her complete list:
- Cover repairs to Puerto Rico’s power grid.
- Medically assisted opioid addiction treatment for over 750,000 people.
- Federal funding for Planned Parenthood for a decade.
- Cover costs to Flint, Michigan's water system — 90 times over.
- Cover the salaries of school nurses for two years
- Cover Medicare prescription deductibles for 12.3M seniors living in poverty.
- Cover the cost of replacing paperless voting machines across the country ... 12 times.
Here's the video.
She wraps it up with this: "And to really bring it home for those of us who live in southeastern Pennsylvania, $5 billion would cover the cost of repairs for all of Philly’s public schools or $5 billion would cover the backlog of repairs for SEPTA."
"So, let's think about that," she says. "What are our priorities?"
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