Ever on the look-out for excuses to claim the country is falling apart under President Joe Biden, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) likened the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which invests in the country and will provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, to a lethal weapon.
On Fox News’ Cavuto Live show today, Lee described the bill as “a $1.2 trillion bomb being dropped on an already carpet-bombed economy.”
FACT CHECK: The unemployment rate fell 0.5%, and the economy created almost a million jobs last month. Not exactly carpet bombing.
Host Neil Cavuto noted that 10 Republicans are supporting the bill. “You think they’re making a mistake?” he “asked.”
“I do,” Lee said, predictably. “Look, inflation’s going way up because the federal government’s been spending way too much money that it doesn’t have. He blamed that on “Congress just spending too much money.” He mentioned the current bill “has at least $250 billion that aren’t paid for, arguably more like $350-$400 billion that aren’t paid for. This is a big problem, this is a big mistake, we don’t need to be doing this right now.”
Our current infrastructure received a grade of C- for 2021 by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Sen. “Fiscal Responsibility” Lee voted for the Trump tax cuts which went to the wealthiest and were deficit-financed. The infrastructure bill is expected create about 650,000 good-paying jobs. It's also quite popular.
Cavuto said some of Lee’s constituents “might come back at you and say, ‘Well we need that.’ What do you tell them?”
Lee proposed “to get the federal government spending money only on truly federal infrastructure.” He said, “States and localities ought to be handling that.” However, he admitted the bill is “likely to pass.”
You can watch it below, from the August 7, 2021 Cavuto Live.
Fox News cheered this increase, as anchors like Tucker Carlson openly advocated for increasing the burdens of the “urbanites who voted for Hillary”.
- Did Mike Lee object to the Trump taxcuts which doubled the federal budget deficit ? Those tax cuts were beneficial for the corporate sector but didn’t benefit blue collar workers.
Unemployment is down and sliding; wages are rising, meaning that consumption (the bedrock of America’s economy) will rise, too.
The stock market (their own favourite measure) is strong and rising at a reasonable pace.
Even the pandemic would be under control if only the GOP were to behave like adults in the counties and states they “govern” (air-quotes obligatory).
How on earth can all that be defined as a “carpet-bombed economy”?
When President Obama took office in 2009, the GOP instantly declared war on him, and determined to block every single thing he said or did. And they played nonsensical games about the price of gas in their attempts to make it look like prices had skyrocketed under the Obama White House. They’re repeating the same playbook now with Joe Biden.
And I’ll note that they’re trying the idea of repetition – they just keep saying that the economy is bad, that Biden is senile, that the border is wide open, etc. They’re hoping that people will eventually just accept those spins as “fact” rather than spin. I’ll also note that some angry Right Wingers are now trying to trot out Tara Reade again too for bad measure, as they’re hoping that we’ve all forgot that she was completely discredited over 15 months ago.
The reality is that the GOP has been trying to stymie the Dems from accomplishing a single thing, including the infrastructure bill. The point is to make the Dems and Biden appear weak and incompetent, so the Right Wing can romp through the midterms and then presumably retake the White House in 2024. If the infrastructure bill goes through, that will be the equivalent of the ACA’s passage for Biden – only this time, several GOP Senators have voted for it. And that’s what Mike Lee is desperately hoping to prevent.
