Republicans warn raising taxes would undermine Biden's infrastructure bill
Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., speaks out after joining a bipartisan meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris to discuss the plan.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength, and 2+2 equals 5. George Orwell warned us of doublespeak 72 years ago. Yet today, some of my colleagues on the left and President Biden are using this tactic in a desperate attempt to sell their disastrous "infrastructure" package. One tweet from a New York senator even claimed child care and caregiving are infrastructure.
Respectfully, no, they are not. Nor is approximately 85% of the $2 trillion monstrosity Biden released last week and dubbed "infrastructure."
As a new member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in Congress, and as the new representative of a district in need of funding for roads, bridges and ports, I’m disturbed by the left’s hijacking of the bipartisan issue of infrastructure and their work to morph it into a socialist wish list.
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Some of the components of Biden’s "infrastructure" plan are just absurd.
The proposal includes $20 billion to advance racial equity and environmental justice. I’m not entirely sure what that means, or what the government is supposed to spend $20 billion on to make sure these vague goals are achieved, but I do know it has nothing to do with infrastructure.
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The plan incorporates large swaths of the socialist "Green New Deal," which remains firmly planted on the brains and wish lists of socialists in the House and Senate despite both Congress and voters rejecting the bill.
For example, $175 billion – nearly 10% of the package – is dedicated to subsidizing electric vehicles. Another $100 billion is allocated to building new public schools to make school lunches "Greener." There is $50 billion is set aside for the National Science Foundation, and $200 billion is meant to green up and fix our power grid, the one that we just overloaded with the $174 billion in electric car subsidies.
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The total spending on Green New Deal style waste could end up being nearly half of the bill.
Far-left Democrats and the Biden administration have been using this tactic all year, most recently passing a COVID "relief" package in which nearly 90% of the money allocated had absolutely nothing to do with relief, all while our national debt continues to mount.
Most Americans would reject these mammoth packages if they actually knew a majority of the spending goes toward advancing unrelated, far-left priorities.
Including Biden’s infrastructure plan, the left has proposed $7 TRILLION in new spending in just one year.
Over $600 billion of your tax dollars would subsidize favored corporations and technologies, rather than allowing a market to develop them. Another $400 billion bails out Medicaid programs. The list goes on and on, but I can assure you, very little of it is what any normal American would consider to be "infrastructure."
On Friday, the White House unveiled yet another spending plan ... which requests a 16% increase in federal spending in one year.
I want to provide real, lasting infrastructure investments for the Lowcountry I represent and the country I serve, but that’s not what this plan does.
It sacrifices those goals on the altar of politically correct ideas and unsound economics. It mortgages our future as well, spending more money we do not have.
And they’re never going to stop. On Friday, the White House unveiled yet another spending plan – separate from round 3 and 4 of COVID-19 relief, and separate from the "infrastructure" bill – which requests a 16% increase in federal spending in one year.
They requested a 27% increase for Commerce, 22% for Health and Human Services, and a whopping 40% increase for the union-run Department of Education.
All this plus they plan on raising your taxes in the middle of a pandemic to do so.
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They’re not going to stop unless we make them. They’re not going to stop unless enough people with sense and courage stand up and say, "No."
Yes, infrastructure was and should be bipartisan. Don’t tell the far-left Democrats or their media partners though, they’re too busy bankrupting the country.
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