I guess I just get annoyed at outrage in general, and especially when it’s rooted in misunderstanding. (Not saying you guys’ posts are definitely based on misunderstanding, I’m just asking because it doesn’t make sense to me as written.)
Everything sounds bad in politics on the surface. And there are definitely things to be unhappy with. But a lot of the bad things Congress does is because it’s so easy for the general public to take limited information and turn it into outrage. So they’re incentivized to use tricks and weird maneuvers to get stuff done with the least amount of political backlash. That leads to suboptimal policy.
In the case of COVID, the checks directly to people are good, but they’re not necessarily better policy than additional unemployment assistance, they’re just less susceptible to outrage.
Is there stuff to disagree with in the government funding bill? Of course! Would we all disagree on what was good and what was bad? Probably. But this is just normal stuff and if you’re consuming media that sensationalizes it all and allow that to make you outraged then you may just be making the problem worse.