President Joe Biden’s newly proposed infrastructure bill is being heavily criticized by GOP lawmakers for its whopping tax increases to support its $3 trillion price tag. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently called out the bill for its outrageous tax hikes in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide job loss. He said that as much as we need to address infrastructure, it is not what the economy needs right now.
“You’re either alarmed about the level of national debt and the future impact of that on our children and our grandchildren or you aren’t. My view of infrastructure is we ought to build that which we can afford, and not either whack the economy with major tax increases or run up the national debt even more,” McConnell said, pointing to the $28 trillion national debt.
While Biden has prided the plan for being the largest “investment in American jobs” in over seven decades, Obama threw $1 trillion at a similar “infrastructure investment” that we haven’t seen a single return to this day. While only 15% of the infrastructure bill goes to actual infrastructure, the rest is a Green New Deal in disguise. House Republicans are pushing back against supporting the bill and warned Democrats that it is straying further away from its transportation roots and turning into a bill that only looks at dealing with climate change and social justice pet projects.
“I don’t think the bill can grow into a multi-trillion-dollar catch-all. A transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill, not a Green New Deal. It needs to be about roads and bridges,” said Missouri Rep. Sam Graves.
Former Georgia Senator David Perdue also called out the bill for being a ‘climate change bill at its roots’ and points out the reality that there won’t be any lenders soon for the federal debt Democrats keep racking up. The bill would spend the bulk of its funds on electric vehicles and free community college.
According to a breakdown of the proposal, only $115 billion would go to highways, bridges, and roads, while $174 billion would be spent on electric vehicles, $213 billion on affordable and sustainable housing, $137 billion on public schools and community colleges, and $180 billion on ‘climate-based research and development.’ So much for an infrastructure bill. The proposal also addresses clean drinking water, high-speed broadband, and workforce development.
President Biden also announced that he will be proposing a second plan that would focus on American families in the following weeks, adding that both plans together would constitute his “economic vision” for the United States. By economic vision, he means taxing everyone broke and destroying the middle class as we know it. This is no infrastructure bill. It’s a Green New Deal with tricky terminology.
