Washington Democrats have adopted a new tactic. They talk publicly about a broadly popular topic and use those talking points to then pass radical legislation seeking to undermine the fabric of our country with the hope that no one is paying attention to their sleight of hand.
Take voting rights, for example. Washington Democrats talk about the need to protect access to the ballot box, which we all agree is important, but their legislative solution is nothing more than a Washington power grab to federalize elections and line their campaign coffers with taxpayer dollars. When that failed, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Georgia over legislation with broad, bipartisan support that makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.
Then there’s economic relief from the pandemic. After three packages passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, Washington Democrats decided to go it alone with a $1.9 trillion partisan spending spree on completely unrelated items. To make matters worse, they punished states like Georgia that protected lives and livelihoods while rewarding states like New York and California who shut down their economies. Now as prices surge on nearly everything we buy, they are looking around for someone else to blame.
The latest example of this bait-and-switch is infrastructure.
This week, the Senate passed an infrastructure bill that contains a lot of items most Americans can get behind. It has funding for roads, bridges, airports, and seaports. It invests in the kinds of things that help us get to and from work safely and move goods and services more efficiently. On its face, it is a good bill.
There’s just one problem: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and President Joe Biden are holding that bill hostage until they get their massive $3.5 trillion package that reads like a socialist wish list. It seeks to fundamentally alter the fabric of our country by dramatically expanding the role of government in our lives, advancing the job-killing Green New Deal, providing amnesty to illegal immigrants, and gutting our military. At the same time, it raises taxes on working American families and the small businesses we need to drive an economic recovery.
The American people deserve a strong, bipartisan infrastructure bill that is focused on improving our nation’s ports, expanding rural broadband, making America’s roads and bridges world-class, and improving the lives of working Americans.
Instead, Joe Biden and his friends in Congress are once again giving the American people the ultimate Washington shell game.
Infrastructure can and should be a bipartisan issue, and I stand ready to continue my bipartisan work to advance that cause. I am not alone in that effort- there are many members on both sides of the aisle ready to roll up our sleeves to accomplish the task.
Unfortunately, a $3.5 trillion package that has nothing to do with roads, bridges, broadband, or ports does not fit that bipartisan cause, which leads us to the question at hand: will President Biden join us in a bipartisan infrastructure push, or is this just another Washington Democrat bait-and-switch?
