Republicans will push for an amendment to require continued construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico if Democrats push to pass President Joe Biden’s $2.2 trillion infrastructure bill with a reconciliation vote, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Tuesday.
“There are parts of the wall that are ready to go up, but the day Joe Biden became president he said ‘Stop. Don’t put up remaining areas’ that we paid for,” Barrasso said on Fox Business’ “Mornings With Maria.” “The raw materials are there, ready to go up. We are going to call the Democrats on that on the floor. If they try reconciliation we are going to try to put right there into the bill finish the wall. We want it done.”
The infrastructure plan is nothing but a “slush fund of liberal spending” rather than a real infrastructure deal that focuses on the nation’s roads or bridges, Barrasso further commented.
“I don’t see any Republican supporting this massive spending by the Biden administration, where less than 6% of it goes for roads and bridges and all the money goes for extraneous,” Barrasso said. “We just spent $1.9 trillion on a so-called coronavirus relief bill … spending massive amounts of money is putting us as a nation in debt, and our kids and grandkids will be carrying this heavy burden for generations to come.
“[It is] a payoff to unions, force-feeding the Green New Deal on the American people,” the senator told show host Maria Bartiromo. “There is more money in this for electric vehicles than there is for roads, bridges, ports, airports, and waterways, combined.”
When one looks at all the spending, the question pops up if the bill addresses what Americans want in infrastructure, and “I say it is not,” Barrasso said.
What is really needed, he said, is “actual infrastructure” to help rebuild the nation’s bridges and roads, but instead, “unnecessary liberal spending” will be paid for “by raising taxes on the American people.”
The largest part of the legislation, $400 billion, is for Medicaid expansion, and it also “draws a target” on carbon-based fuels and America’s oil and gas energy industry, and the millions of people who hold those jobs, Barrasso said.
“This is going to raise costs for how you heat your home and what it costs to drive buy food,” Barrasso said. “It is going to make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy.”
Meanwhile, there are “many things” that can be done on infrastructure, Barrasso said.
“Last year, I chaired the Environmental Public Works Committee, and out of committee came a bipartisan, unanimous vote on infrastructure [on] roads, bridges, and ports,” the senator said, adding that work was also done concerning funding for safe water sources.
He said it’s agreed that improvements to broadband access also can be considered as infrastructure, but the current plan includes “extraneous spending on things so extreme that even Democrats are saying hey hold on, you are going away too far.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has reached an agreement with the governments of Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala to tighten up their borders to alleviate the current border crowding situation, and Barrasso said it appears that step was made because the White House realized “what a mess they have made.”
“We need to secure the border,” he said. “It is not secure now. You have so many liberals in the Democrat Party that want to basically have open borders, want to eliminate immigration, and customs enforcement. They are really not on the side of a secure border. The easiest way into the United States is to come in illegally. You don’t need identification and you don’t need to be tested for coronavirus.”
Source: Newmax
