The Patriot Post® · Building Bridges on Infrastructure
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that Democrats should push through an infrastructure package without Republican support. He didn’t “agree” that Biden should wait for “consultation and dialogue” with Republicans. “The bottom line is the American people want results.” You’d think from his comments that Democrats had already offered to negotiate, and that Republicans had stubbornly refused to make reasonable compromises. In fact, although President Biden pitched his $2.2 trillion infrastructure package over a month ago, he is meeting with top Congressional Republicans today for the first time.
Sanders got one thing right: the American people do want results. It’s shocking how little progress the U.S. Congress can make on such an overwhelmingly bipartisan issue as infrastructure. Despite years of rhetoric, America’s infrastructure is still awaiting its first major overhaul since President Eisenhower founded the interstate system. But the American people don’t want to get runover by the radical policies that Democrats have crammed into the bill that have nothing to do with infrastructure.
Democrats are trying to leverage the popular demand for improved infrastructure in America by strong-arming Republicans into accepting a boat load of radical progressive wish list items. Only seven percent of President Biden’s plan concerns roads and bridges. His plan includes a corporate tax hike, green energy subsidies, and union bailouts. The bill would dedicate a stunning $174 billion towards building a national network of electric vehicle charging stations. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) countered the multi-trillion dollar package (to which infrastructure is only the wrapper) with a much smaller plan “which deals with what all of us agree is infrastructure.”
President Biden can call for unity until he’s blue in the face, but that doesn’t make it true, or even make him sincere. His actions only demonstrate the unprecedented power the extreme Left wields over his administration. In fact, moderate rhetoric masking extreme policies characterize every one of the Democrats’ legislative objectives – “Covid relief,” the infrastructure packaging, the plan to throttle American jobs, the Corrupt Politicians Act (H.R. 1), the (in)Equality Act, defunding the police, the American Families Plan. The deception is endless.
I hope you will join me in encouraging conservatives to resist the Left’s massive funding bills, regardless of what they call them. If you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, you should certainly never judge a bill by its title.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.