The blizzard of COVID-19 spending will extend for years into the future, long after the disease should be behind us. Bureaucrats have not even been able to spend the money that has already been appropriated, yet Democrats feel the need to appropriate $1.9 trillion more. What exactly is the money for? The short answer is: whatever. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is spending a few hundred $million of it on the police.

She must be getting tired of the skyrocketing crime resulting from Black Lives Matter mania. From the Chicago Tribune:

Lightfoot’s administration spent $281.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief money on Chicago Police Department personnel costs, prompting an angry response Wednesday from activists and some aldermen.

How dare she spend the coronavirus cash on law enforcement when no doubt there are countless other things having little to do with the virus that local pols want it spent on?

The number came to light as Lightfoot seeks City Council approval to transfer about $65 million in unspent federal COVID-19 money into the 2021 budget, after the Biden administration waived Federal Emergency Management Agency local funding matches and extended the deadline to spend federal dollars until the end of the year.

It takes time to unload all the money he plans to hand out.

The city received about $1.2 billion from the federal government to help plug COVID-19 budget holes and defray additional costs as the city’s economy cratered during the early months of the pandemic.

Money is fungible. The cash Washington has been flinging to the four winds will plug all sorts of holes in the budgets of jurisdictions that have been governed irresponsibly. Those jurisdictions that have been governed responsibly will pick up the tab. That’s how things work with liberal politics.

On a tip from R F.

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