“America will never be a socialist nation,” President Trump proudly proclaimed in his 2019 State of the Union Address. Sadly, as each day of this coronavirus pandemic wears on, these words seem to grow less and less prophetic. Just as we think we’ve reached our capacity for government intrusions into the daily lives of Americans, we’re reminded that we may not have even scraped the surface.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to cosponsor the Pandemic Pay-For Act, S. 4487. Introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the Pandemic Pay-For Act would pay for the $2.4 trillion of COVID-19 spending that Congress has passed by freezing federal spending at FY 2021 levels through FY 2024.

FreedomWorks is proud to announce that our bill of the month for July 2020 is the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act, H.R. 2859 and S. 1620, introduced in the House by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and in the Senate by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Angus King (I-Maine). This bipartisan legislation would loosen restrictions so that meat processed in a state-licensed facility can be sold locally -- without regulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) -- in an effort to help address issues with our meat supply chain that have become glaringly obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democrats are expected to vote early next week on a bill, H.R. 1425, entitled the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act.” The bill is exactly what it explicitly claims to be - a doubling down on the original structure of ObamaCare, with some extra patches added in. This is likely a foreshadowing of the push we’ll see to take the next step in expanding government control of health care should Democrats succeed in taking the White House in 2020.

In the past few weeks, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has continued to prove that he is a leader when it matters. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, bill after bill has been rushed through Congress, without ample input from members and with too many items in them to be good.

On March 15, the authority for Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act formally expired. This is one of the provisions that spawned the Edward Snowden leaks back in 2013 and drew the American people’s attention to the scope of abuses perpetrated by the intelligence community. Though some reforms have been made, many in Congress still stand by the program despite the revelations.