The selling of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is well underway, with the Democratic National Committee unveiling a billboard in South Tampa on Monday advertising that Americans will soon be receiving those $1,400 stimulus checks and “shots in arms.”


What You Need To Know


It’s all part of a strategy to sell the COVID economic relief plan to the public that will see President Biden and Vice President Harris (and their spouses) going out on the road over the next several weeks to build support for the massive spending plan – one of the most expensive in U.S. history.

That tour will kick off in suburban Philadelphia this week and move on to Nevada, Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico and Georgia.

The billboard also calls out Florida’s two GOP U.S. Senators – Marco Rubio and Rick Scott – who like every other congressional Republican, opposed the spending package.

 “Voters in Tampa won’t be able to miss this message: help is here, and it’s because of President Biden, not Senators Rubio or Scott who opposed this bill and the relief it provides Floridians,” says DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. “With measures including direct payments of up to $1,400 per person and resources to help manufacture and distribute vaccines, the American Rescue Plan will provide the relief working families need and overwhelmingly want, while showing that the government is again working for the people.”

Polls show overwhelming support for the relief package.  A Pew Research Center survey released last week showed 70% of all Americans support the bill, and that includes 41% of Republicans and independents. Only 28% oppose it.

Rubio thinks the polls will change when more people learn what’s in the bill.

“I mean, public polls are only as accurate as the people doing them, the methodology they use and all that stuff,” he said, as reported by The Hill. “There’s a lot, a trillion dollars of non-COVID stuff. When people find out about that, they’re going to be outraged.”

Scott echoes those sentiments, blasting congressional Democrats by saying that “it was never about helping the American people. Instead, they’re using trillions of American taxpayer dollars, under the guise of COVID relief, to fund their liberal priorities and pay back their blue state Governor pals. They really should be ashamed of this political theatre.”

Members of the Biden administration say that they have learned their lessons from how the public evaluated the 2009 stimulus bill. The President has said that the Obama administration should have done more to sell the public on the benefits of that plan.

 “Barack was so modest he didn’t want to take, as he said, a victory lap,” Biden told House Democrats earlier this month. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”

President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009. Shortly thereafter the Tea Party emerged, and their criticism contributed to popular opinion souring on the legislation, with polls showing in January 2010 that 74% said half or more of the stimulus money had been wasted.

The billboard is located right next door to Trader Joes, at the intersection of Dale Mabry Blvd. and Swann Ave. It will be up for one week.