(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- President Joe Biden is facing an uphill battle in getting his newly-proposed $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan passed.
He hasn’t gained much support at all from Republicans, and even some members in his own party are balking at some of the ways in which the president has proposed paying for the plan.
In his fight to drum up support around the nation — and thus put pressure on members of Congress to vote in favor of the bill — the White House is pushing hard in two interesting states. They’re focusing first on Kentucky and California — the home states of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, respectively.
The White House is trying to let voters in these states know what good the bill would do for them if it were to pass. But, the GOP leaders are fighting back hard.
The word from the GOP leaders are that this infrastructure plan is simply a laundry list of various progressive demands, instead of a tried-and-true infrastructure plan that would help restore and repair bridges and roads, for example.
At a news conference in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell said:
“I’m going to fight them every step of the way because I think this is the wrong prescription for America.”
And McCarthy released his own memo that accused the president of planning a “kitchen sink of wasteful progressive demands.”
The White House has countered this by releasing fact sheets showing how each of the states would benefit from the plan. One of these focuses on the build-up of broadband internet access for Kentucky. As the fact sheet says:
“12% of Kentuckians live in areas where, by one definition, there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds. The American Jobs Plan will invest $100 billion to bring universal, reliable, high-speed, and affordable coverage to every family in America.”
In addition, it notes Kentucky has:
“1,033 bridges and over 1,322 miles of highway in poor condition. Since 2011, commute times have increased by 6.3% in Kentucky, and on average, each driver pays $444 per year in costs due to driving on roads in need of repair. The American Jobs Plan will devote more than $600 billion to transform our nation’s transportation infrastructure and make it more resilient, including $115 billion in repairing roads and bridges.”
A similar fact sheet says, in California, “there are 1,536 bridges and over 14,220 miles of highway in poor condition. The American Jobs Plan will devote more than $600 billion to transform our nation’s transportation infrastructure.”
The Senate Republican Conference has hit back. They say although the infrastructure plan is “described as both a jobs plan and an infrastructure plan, the proposal undermines both. Biden’s partisan, job-crushing slush fund spends just 5% of the total $2.7 trillion on roads and bridges.”
Congress just returned to Washington, D.C., this week after a short hiatus. Democrats are hoping to push this plan forward or either “make real progress” on the plan by Memorial Day.
If Republicans stick to their guns, it may not make any progress at all.
