WASHINGTON — Heritage Action for America released the following statement from conservative groups Heritage Action, Club for Growth, The Coalition to Protect American Workers, FreedomWorks, and Taxpayers Protection Alliance responding to reports of a so-called "bipartisan" infrastructure agreement in the Senate.
“The latest “compromise” infrastructure framework agreed to by some Senators is no compromise at all. The top three Democratic leaders in Washington, DC have made clear that the compromise framework is being held hostage by Speaker Pelosi and is tied to a hyper-partisan reconciliation package being shepherded through by avowed socialist Bernie Sanders. This partisan package constructed to appease the Radical Left is likely to include the largest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon B. Johnson, the Green New Deal, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and $6 trillion in total spending, paid for by job-killing taxes and more debt on Americans.
Even alone, the “compromise” package that some Senate Republicans signaled support toward doesn’t pass the smell-test. The proposal would spend $1.2 trillion on Left-leaning priorities and fails to properly pay for it. The “compromise” includes more funding for President Biden’s favorite earmark – Amtrak - and mass transit than it includes in funding for highways. Moreover, it funds Leftist climate change and resiliency funding, subsidies for electric vehicle use, and unnecessary environmental clean-ups. And to cover the costs, negotiators included gimmicky pay-fors like increased IRS audits (while vastly expanding the size, scope, and cost of the IRS) and sales of public goods like wireless spectrum and national oil reserves — all of which should instead be used to pay down our national debt obligations.
While most Americans expect our government to fund interstate infrastructure like roads, and bridges, they do not expect their lives to be fundamentally altered under an “infrastructure in name only” grab bag of socialist-derived policies.
Senators should reject the disastrous Biden/Bernie infrastructure framework that adds trillions of federal spending to the national debt and return to the drawing board to deliver a plan that responsibly and fully reopens the U.S. economy. The suspension of the debt limit expires on August 1. Congress should work on avoiding a fiscal crisis, not exacerbating one.”