Republicans should reject the massive $1.2 trillion “bipartisan” infrastructure bill because Democrats are using it as a front to push through an even bigger $3.5 trillion leftist slush fund.
But let’s say the Democrats’ proposed reconciliation package fails, or the centrists successfully detach it from their bipartisan negotiations. Even so, Republicans should still kill the infrastructure bill for one reason only: It’s a bad, wasteful, unnecessary bill filled with ridiculous handouts.
Here are just a few examples of the pork stuffed throughout the 2,700-plus-page bill that were noted in this helpful Twitter thread:
- $250 million for an invasive species elimination program that would target “at a minimum, cheatgrass, Ventenata dubia, medusahead, bulbous bluegrass, Japanese brome, rattail fescue, Japanese honeysuckle, phragmites, autumn olive,” etc., along states’ roads, highways, railroads, or “other surface transportation routes.”
- $50 million to fund studies, or “pilot projects,” to “test the feasibility of a road usage fee,” also known as an additional per-mile tax.
- $50 million for 10 “Centers of Excellence for Resilience and Adaptation” that will study how climate change and extreme weather affect infrastructure and how decisions about transportation affect “economically disadvantaged, rural, and predominantly minority communities.”
- an unspecified amount of funding to “explore every opportunity to encourage and support the pursuit and retention of” women in the trucking industry.
- $2.5 billion for “alternative fueled vehicles” and other green energy “improvements” at public schools.
- $5 billion for “alternative-fueled” school buses.
- the adoption of a Digital Equity Act that aims to provide “the activities that are necessary to ensure that all individuals in the U.S. have access to, and the use of, affordable information and communication technologies, such as “internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user,” “digital literacy training,” “quality technical support,” and “basic awareness of measures to ensure online privacy and cybersecurity.”
- $50 million for the “Central Utah Project Completion Account” (just in case you were wondering why Sen. Mitt Romney continues to support this bill).
- $1 billion for the “Appalachian Regional Commission,” which just so happens to be co-led by Sen. Joe Manchin’s wife, Gayle Conelly Manchin.
- $75 million for the “Denali Commission” thanks to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
As my colleague Quin Hillyer noted, only $110 billion in this massive bill is earmarked for traditional roads and bridges. Nearly $40 billion of this is allocated to bureaucratic public transit authorities, which already received a $67 billion payout during the coronavirus pandemic. It is filled with subtle leftist rhetoric and hefty payouts for all of the senators involved in the negotiations, and it in no way pays for itself, Hillyer explained. In fact, an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the bill won’t raise nearly half of what the deal’s proponents have claimed.
This wasteful spending is made even worse by the realization that our infrastructure doesn’t need that much help, as National Review’s David Harsanyi argued recently. He cited a 2018 Reuters analysis that found only about 2% of the nation’s busiest bridges needed significant repairs. We could likely fix those right now with the more than $1 trillion in pandemic relief aid that remains unspent, including $210 billion that was allocated to state and local governments, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Republicans must reject this shameful, pork-filled bill as the waste of money that it is. Anyone who says otherwise is probably getting something out of it.
