McConnell Says 'Zero' Senate Republicans Will Support Biden's '$4.1 Trillion Grab Bag' Spending Plan
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday not one Senate Republican will support the more than $4 trillion in spending recently unveiled by President Joe Biden.
Biden has proposed a $2.3 trillion package that includes infrastructure repairs and other Democratic priorities as well as a $1.8 trillion plan to fund education, child care and more. Biden wants to increase corporate taxes and taxes on wealthier Americans to pay for his plans.
During an appearance at the University of Louisville, McConnell said the spending includes a lot beyond infrastructure.
“There’s more money in there for electric cars than there are for roads, and bridges, and ports, and water lines … broadband, which we would all concede is infrastructure,” he said.
“A whole lot of the rest of this money is for a whole lot of things that have nothing to do with infrastructure.”
“So I think I can pretty safely say, none of my Republican colleagues are going to support a $4.1 trillion infrastructure package, only part of which is for infrastructure,” he said.
“So what we have offered is to support a more narrow proposal,” he said, referencing a proposal from Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia that would spend $568 billion on infrastructure, according to Fox News.
He said that plan “protects what all of us would agree is infrastructure and does not revisit the 2017 tax bill to pay for it.”
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“The new administration wants to undo the most significant domestic accomplishment — other than judges — of the previous four years, and that is the 2017 tax bill,” he said. “How to pay for the infrastructure bill on our side — we’re not going to revisit the 2017 tax bill.”
“We’re open to doing a roughly $600 billion package which deals with what all of us would agree is infrastructure and to talk about how to pay for that in any way other than reopening the 2017 tax reform bill, which I believe — and all of my members believe — is what created, as of February 2020, the best economy in 50 years,” McConnell said.
McConnell said Republicans want focused legislation.
“If it’s going to be about infrastructure, let’s make it about infrastructure. And I think there’s some sentiment on the Democratic side for splitting it off,” he said.
McConnell said big spending and big tax hikes will not get GOP support.
“[I]f they can’t get all their ducks in a row, to use reconciliation again — as you recall they’ll have to have every single Democrat in the Senate, all of them, in line, in lockstep, in order to do that — a number of them are saying they agree with us,” McConnell said.
“I think it’s worth talking about, but I don’t think there’ll be any Republican support, none, zero, for the $4.1 trillion grab bag, which has infrastructure in it, but a whole lot of other stuff,” he said.
Last week, McConnell criticized Biden’s address to Congress, noting “the President talked about unity and togetherness while reading off a multi-trillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in,” according to a transcript posted on McConnell’s website.
“This Administration wants to jack up taxes in order to nudge families toward the kinds of jobs Democrats want them to have, in the kinds of industries Democrats want to exist, with the kinds of cars Democrats want them to drive, using the kinds of childcare arrangements that Democrats want them to pursue,” he said.
“These plans aren’t about creating options and flexibility for Americans; they’re about imposing a vision.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
