Trillion Dollar Infrastructure Crap Sandwich on Fast Track to Pass Senate With Republican Support
The 17 Republican senators who supported this bill can never say they want a small government and call themselves a fiscal conservative.
The Senate voted 68-29 to end the debate on the craptastic $1 trillion infrastructure bill. It is now on the path to passing this week:
In a 68-29 vote, the Senate closed down debate on a bill that spends $550 billion in new money on the nation’s physical infrastructure. Sunday’s vote came after senators spent the weekend haggling over amendments and time agreements to consider them.
Final passage of the legislation is expected late Monday night, or the wee hours of Tuesday at the latest, unless a deal is reached among all 100 senators to speed it up. A 50-hour budget debate and an unlimited “vote-a-rama” on nonbinding but politically symbolic topics will follow immediately after.
Sen. Bill Haggerty (R-TN) tried to slow down the debate:
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said over the weekend that he would not allow the infrastructure bill to pass more quickly, dampening the Democratic majority’s enthusiasm for allowing the GOP to have more amendment votes. The Senate has considered more than 20 amendments to the bill thus far, but attempts to vote on two dozen more fell apart on Thursday night after Hagerty refused to expedite the bill as a condition of the deal.
Hagerty on Sunday afternoon attempted to bring up 17 amendments by unanimous consent, but Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) objected, citing his refusal to come to a time agreement and potential objections from other senators.
Other GOP senators also tried unsuccessfully on Sunday to bring up their own amendments.
Nightmare
Tucker Carlson named the 17 Republican senators who supported the stupid bill. The list contains the usual suspects, but also included Chuck Grassley (Iowa), James Risch (Idaho), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), and Todd Young (Indiana).
These Republicans can never call themselves a fiscal conservative or want a small government.
I am a libertarian because I know neither party wants to stop spending or reducing the size of government. But at least the Democrats are honest about it. The Republicans complain about the debt and overreaching Democrats. They need to look in the mirror.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) tried to defend his support on Sunday Morning Futures:
The North Dakota Republican argued that the bill contains valuable spending for basic infrastructure including roads, bridges and airports, which are essential for the movement of goods throughout the nation.
“Of the $1.2 trillion, $450 billion – that’s over a third of it – is not just infrastructure, it’s roads and bridges specifically,” Cramer told host Maria Bartiromo. “In addition to that, there’s ports, waterways, railroads, airports broadband, all of which are critical to the movement of goods and services around this country and around the world.”
Muh rooooooooadz!!! (That is the biggest trigger to a libertarian because so many people counter any argument with, “But the roads!”)
Gag me, Cramer:
The plan allocates billions to sectors such as resilience and water storage, power infrastructure and electric vehicles – all of which are arguably a precursor to green living.
“Cybersecurity and resiliency of the grid is [sic] not exclusive to the Green New Deal,” the Senator said. “I think we’ve all experienced the problems with a lack of resiliency to our energy infrastructure. The colonial pipeline cyber-attack was a pretty good example of that.”
“Are there some things missing that we [Republicans] would love? Of course, there are,” he went on. “But this is a 50-50 senate. Democrats have a majority in the House and the White House so you’re going to have to take some of those things to get all the other really good things.”
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Comments
There are as many supposed Republicans ,RINO’s,that need to be removed from office as there are Commiecrats,two different sides of the same corrupt coin.
Trump is gone and the bastards feel free to bastard
See?
Trump was getting in the way.
The corrupt uniparty thieves can now freely go back to their usual business: screwing us taxpayers.
I can hardly wait to receive a call from the RNC wanting donations,WTF do the Republicturds begging for donations to further the destruction of this nation,NEVER.
With this vote the Republic ends
It ended decades ago.
This could well be posted on Branco’s cartoon of the Titanic.
We are past that point. Now we are watching the establishment of the Principate.
Subotai Bahadur
Wonder how many million each of these RINOs will personally make from this horrible bill that really screws over the taxpayers?
If the $3.5 trillion “box of nonsense” bill doesn’t pass the Senate, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill will die in the House.
From what I’ve read, the $1 trillion “infrastructure bill” will sit in the House until the $3.5 trillion “box of nonsense” passes the Senate.
Sen Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has indicated that she won’t revise or remove the filibuster, which is required to pass the “box of nonsense” (not to mention HR1, the For The Right People Act, and HR4, the John Lewis Run All Elections Out of the DOJ Act).
Pet supply catalogues list a powder to sprinkle on dog food that “gives feces an unpleasant taste.” I’m not saying it would work but maybe look at it.
A trillion here – a trillion there.. Sooner or latter, you are are talking about a lot of money – until it is all debased and not worth anything, that is.
About half of the bill is fairly important and needed. The other half is pure lard, doled out to the Dems and the Republicans who vote for it.
Deep state at work. How much of that trillion is going back to the Big Guys in the House and Senate?
You can make an argument for roads, and to a lessor extent, rail. But show me in the Constitution where Congress has any authority for the rest of it?
Also, many don’t realize, you are already paying for Broadband infrastructure in your cable (phone) and cell phone bills. Look under “fees and taxes” and look for something called “Universal Service.” That is supposed to fund internet to “libraries, hospitals, and underserved areas.” It’s all a big joke to the cable companies as we pay them to expand their networks in areas they were already going to expand anyway, and the underserved areas rarely, if ever, get additional coverage. Thank VP AlGore for that.
So could someone please tell me the difference between a democrat and republican because I’m not really seeing a difference between the two.
A republican lives in a conservative district. The End.
In other words, a democrat who lives in a conservative district and tells everyone he’s a Repulican in order to get elected.
This is exactly what I wrote to Tom Tillis this week.
A Republican lies about what they WILL do when elected, then does nothing.
A Democrat lies about what they WON’T do when they get elected, then does it anyway.
That’s the only real difference.
spelling.
DUH!
LOL
These Republicans can never call themselves a fiscal conservative or want a small government.
Those republicans need to change their political affiliation to democrat and be done with it. They certainly cannot call themselves anything else.
Remind me again, what’s the reason for voting Republican? Oh, never mind. I remember. There is no reason to vote Republican.
Maybe better stated as ‘no reason to continue voting for these particular r’.
If you had three bad girlfriends in a row;
1. Would you stop dating women?
2. The only constant between those three relationships was you so maybe you were the problem?
We allow these politicians to excuse their failure by voting for them in a competitive primary. If not competitive we allow that to exist by not coalescing around an attractive alternative.
There are 50 r Senators and 17 did the wrong thing. You would have us throw out 33 r Senators who did the right thing.
“Cybersecurity and resiliency of the grid is [sic] not exclusive to the Green New Deal,” the Senator said. “I think we’ve all experienced the problems with a lack of resiliency to our energy infrastructure. The colonial pipeline cyber-attack was a pretty good example of that.”
So was the Texas freeze — an example of over-reliance on unreliable green energy, while shirking maintenance on the traditional alternatives.
Isn’t Cramer the dolt who hugged Ashley Babbitt’s killer?
The Dhimmi-crats play the Senate GOP for suckers, yet again. ‘Twas ever thus. The Dhimmi-crats’ perennial success in hustling GOP dupes is embarrassing.
Willing dupes. Very willing dupes who would be horribly disappointed if the Left did not get everything they want.
Subotai Bahadur
Billions of tax dollars are going to flow into Democrat backers hands.
It’s legal robbery really
Cramer is a fool or a liar. Not a single additional dollar will be spent on roads, bridges, or airports. Money is fungible. Each dollar allocated to targeted spending will reduce general fund spending on those targets by a dollar, essentially increasing the general fund’s slush factor by the amount of the targeted spending.
Now that the pretense of being “small government” is over could we stop simping for corporations that hate us, start using the government to protect freedom of speech in the public square (i.e. on youtube)?
And now that Democrats are willing to use pork to buy Republican votes why can’t we use pork to?
And while we are modernizing could we start cutting the budget of the national security state? We could increase the budget to what Russia spends every year.
Never vote GOP again? No other way to send the message.
You do realize the reason this has GOP support is the GOP is incapable of blocking this which makes the senators (not unreasonably) think
“I could either stand on principle, fail to block this thanks to reconciliation and get nothing or I could bring home the bacon and let the Democrats call this bipartisan”
I personally agree with Michael Knowles reasoning for why to stand on principle on this, but I can’t fault the reasoning that if this will pass via reconciliation anyway why not bring home the bacon in return for your vote?
Democrats are playing to win and are willing to pay GOP senators in pork to their state for their vote; maybe we should have been doing that when we had a trifecta. Maybe instead of useless small government rhetoric about pork we should use it, it is a good tool that major GOP figures from Eisenhower to Raegan used the revulsion at pork is a recent thing and it hasn’t been helpful to passing a conservative agenda because it just removed a weapon from our arsenal the Democrats will always use.
Danny. Seriously? You are actually, seriously advocating pork bribes? The actual wasting and throwing away of taxpayer monies to “buy” constituent good will back at home?
I could not disagree more. These pork vote buys are ridiculously unfair to the American people; you remember, I suspect that it is we, the people, stuck with the resulting bribe-for-votes fall-out from ObamaCare?
Just as ObamaCare had nothing to do with health care, the Biden/RINO “infrastructure” bill has little to do with infrastructure (like, what a third of it, all of which adds to the national debt and is pretty damned useless since it nets no real new jobs). This horrific boondoggle disaster will increase our national debt and will mean new taxes (including those for miles driven!).
Pork is an absolute evil, and you should never ever advocate bribery as a winning strategy. Ever. Yeah, Mittens McSmarmy got some of our monies for Utah in exchange for his vote, but what decent people will look at Mitt’s pathetic ($500k for Utah) and Manchin’s $1 million for West Virgina and conclude that Mittens McRomneyCare is anything but a weak and useless sack of crap? He expects his Utah voters to cheer his selling out all of America to commies for $500k. Romney can afford to pay that himself, from his personal wealth. But no, he wants you and me and our children and grandchildren to pay one trillion dollars to do . . pretty much nothing. He signs us, American taxpayers, up for $500 million in debt as part of that fake “infrastructure” package . . . and counts on us not to notice that the Green New Deal “infrastructure” boondoggle does far more and far more costly damage than that for which he sold America out.
So for that carve-out, Romney represents Utah as more interested in themselves than in our great country. Romney Road to Ruin is built! Woots! And it only took a $500 million (our of $1 trillion) to happen! Isn’t he the smarmy loser we always knew he was?
Pork is a sell-out proposition. It says my state getting some bucks for roads and Indian reservations or whatever is more important than the robbery and selling out of the American people (my getting reelected is of supreme import).
The vote isn’t close right now, but what if it were (like back during ObamaCare)? The Marxist promise is that Romney gets his cynical, unprincipled ‘vote-getting’ pork (that should disgust every single person in Utah), and he smarms along, agreeing to horrific, anti-American, destructive, racist, and divisive elements of the bill . . . just so he can wave it around back home to benefit himself. He is disgusting to his core. Mitt’s greed and political ambition tell him that everyone is as base and disgusting as he is, that bringing home $500 million on a bill that will cost multiple times that over ten years is a winner.
This is the swamp, this is bad faith, this is corruption. A $500 million buy-out for Utah will actually cost all of us how much? Will diminish our Constitution how much? That vote is a vote for Biden’s Green New Deal, Build Back Better, racialist equity boondoggle. Never forget that pork-grasping political robots do not give a crap what else is in the bill, how it will harm the American people, the very fabric of our great country, or how much it will cost . . . because that is all for barter and sale by unscrupulous, corrupt pols like Romney who care only about themselves, their next election, their clinging to power.
There is no ‘good’ use of pork bribes, none. Ever. Spin a bribe any way you like, and it’s still a bribe, and it’s still unconscionable and wrong.
If we had used pork bribes during the Trump years we would have ended up with a lot more legislation than just tax cuts and prison reform. Executive action is a temporary thing. We wouldn’t have dealt with the deficit (I think that was one area you disagreed with Trump on and I am with you on it) but we would have ended up with new laws that would have greatly helped America.
Pork is a tool that Democrats use to further their agenda and we need to relearn to use it ourselves. Unilateral disarmament generally results in a slaughter. If say Joe Manchin votes to make social media public utilities that would lead to mutual disarmament, which is the kind of disarmament I actually approve of (politically speaking that is).
I agree all of them should have stood on principle but remembering the reason they didn’t is worthwhile for this reason.
Almost all of those senators existed as senators 2014- and many of them occupied their positions already by 2010.
They have a proven record of obstructing the Democrats when they actually have the power to do so (although they have shown when they don’t their vote is for sale so not perfect but certainly better than letting Democrats retain control). From 2010 on Obama got nothing that required the house (incredibly enough not even a war which presidents tend to find is easy), and as of 2014 he got nothing that required the senate either. Mitt Romney is after the Obama years so I don’t know with Romney (who I hope is primaried). Luckily the very small bribe he managed is highly unlikely to save him from a primary (only a bad primary opponent could do that).
Romney should be primaried, as should Murkowski. Primarying 17 senators just isn’t realistic and if this vote makes it possible that would mean the vote puts is into a depression (at which point we have much worst issues).
The topic of pork isn’t black and white. The Democrats use pork bribes for bad ends and they get the desired result. We should start using pork bribes because we need legislation on a wide variety of topics and there is no other way to get the votes even in a best case scenario for 2024.
Would a scenario where say a Republican president wins 2024, and uses it to
1. Make the budget smaller and gradually balanced by getting enough senators to vote for a bill that will try and handle both out of control military industrial complex spending (which has to be cut if we go to gradually balance the budget), entitlement spending (which really can’t be cut without cutting the mic due to the fact that you need to show the government is cutting back to avoid bankruptcy not trying to screw over people who have planned around a promise made in law by the government)
2. Make social media public utilities no longer capable of discrimination, or if you would prefer a different solution to big tech censorship.
3. Eliminate CRT from the US federal government
4. Promote patriotic instead of CRT education
We saw what happens when we unilaterally disarm during the Trump years Democrats just walk all over us. Even the most optimistic expectations for 2022 and 2024 doesn’t involve us likely gaining 60 senate seats and the presidency. If we manage 58 (which would itself be miraculous) and the presidency spending millions on pointless projects in West Virginia and Arizona in return for the agenda you think (and for the most part I also think) would help Americans of all kinds….
Pork certainly isn’t good, at the same time a senators job is the interest of their state and if the Democrats are going to inflict massive inflation on everyone in the country and are passing trillions in new spending….it is easy to see why they would ask for some of that be directed to their pet projects.
The only solution is retake at least one chamber of congress (as demonstrated by the Obama years) in the meantime I think it is worth understanding why the backbenchers not named Romney or Murkowski (who do like stabbing us in the back) are bending, and learning how we are going to get Democrats to bend when we retake the presidency.
I would love to think we will get 60 senate seats, but failing that we need a plan B for how to pass our agenda assuming we actually get power again. Is it fair to the American people for the public square to exclude people for loving the country?
TLDR version
We are secure against any Biden legislation if we get at least one chamber of congress otherwise pork will make senators wobbly, next time we have this much power we should use the same method to achieve real wins and if Democrats want mutual (instead of the unilateral disarmament) we have now we could all agree to stop using pork together.
The DC government obviously can’t be trusted to represent the interests of conservative citizens – we already knew that. So while we can try to use that avenue to make change, it has to be part of a multi-pronged strategy. DC has to be starved of money and power, regardless of who’s running it.
These 17 treacherous senators have to be replaced. How many are subject to primaries next year?
PLUS conservatives need to focus on capturing enough state legislatures to call for a(nother) constitutional convention. The DC “representatives” will never agree to give up power. It has to be taken from them.
These are just the first steps – the “by the rules” steps.
The reason this has bipartisan support is it didn’t actually need Republican votes which made Republican senators willing to sell their votes.
When Democrats did not have the house (2010-2014) they didn’t have a single GOP senator supporting any of their ideas not even blue state senators.
I don’t trust either side to place the benefit of the nation ahead of their partisan payouts to their supporting groups or benefactors. They fail to prioritize failing bridges, an archaic electric grid subject to enemy sabotage and electromagnetic pulse, highways that crumble four years after repaving, failed to protect Americans by not funding the completion of the wall on the southern border, and any kind of a water reservoir problem or Mississippi River drainage diversion for thirsty western states. No non-political master plan. And then they do their usual, buy votes and throw away billions of hard-earned tax dollars by people who can hardly afford a gasoline fill-up these days due to the inflation caused by liberal politicians with your money. Worst yet, the proposed bipartisan deal is a farce as the democrats are already planning to ram through a ruinous and inflationary radical left wish list worth 3.5 trillion dollars by way of budget reconciliation, which bypasses the filibuster vote of 60 votes to bring to the floor! The democrats are not operating in good faith as usual.