Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed Democrats on Thursday for using the latest coronavirus relief package as a vehicle to pass a marijuana bill in legislative limbo.
Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, spoke out on the Senate floor in light of the relief package unveiled Tuesday in the House of Representatives containing a provision identical to the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act that has stalled on Capitol Hill for the last several months.
Without addressing the proposed federal banking reform at the heart of the provision, Mr. McConnell took issue with the sheer number of times the new House bill mentions marijuana and criticized its requirement that the government study diversity within the nation’s cannabis industry, signaling the package is unlikely to fare well if considered in the Senate.
“The word ‘cannabis’ appears in the bill 68 times. More times than the word ‘job’ and four times as many as the word ‘hire’,” Mr. McConnell complained.
“Maybe it’s best if House Democrats focus on cannabis studies and leave economics to the rest of us,” he said on the Senate floor. “This is a totally unserious effort.”
Dubbed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act, the relief package proposed this week contains a number of measures meant to help reel from the impact of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and shuttered countless businesses throughout the country.
Among the proposal’s 1,800-plus pages is language identical to the SAFE Banking Act, which easily cleared the House with bipartisan support last year but has stalled in the Senate ever since.
“The purpose of this section is to increase public safety by ensuring access to financial services to cannabis-related legitimate businesses and service providers and reducing the amount of cash at such businesses,” begins the part of the HEROES Act containing the revived marijuana bill.
Thirty-three states have legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes, including nine where adults can purchase retail pot from commercial dispensaries.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, however, so financial institutions are often reluctant to work with marijuana businesses.
In addition to establishing protections for banks that service the marijuana industry, the SAFE Banking and HEROES Acts call for federal banking regulators and the Comptroller General to conduct studies for Congress on the access to financial services for minority-owned and women-owned cannabis businesses.
Criticizing the latest House bill Thursday, Mr. McConnell said the marijuana proposals were among several “left-wing oddities” included by Democrats in the relief package.
“That’s what’s so remarkable,” said Mr. McConnell. “House Democrats had a blank slate to write anything they wanted to define the modern Democratic Party, any vision for the society they wanted, and here’s what they chose: tax hikes on small businesses, giveaways to blue state millionaires, government checks for illegal immigrants and sending diversity detectives to inspect the pot industry.”
The House is slated to vote on the HEROES Act as soon as Friday before its considered in the Senate.
