McCarthy: Biden's 'Absurd' $2T Infrastructure Spending No Joke

President Joe Biden's "absurd price tag" for $2 trillion in new spending is no April Fools' Day joke, but the "latest example of 'Bidenomics' in action," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Thursday, a day after the president announced his extensive new spending plan. 

"[It is] blind faith in government spending and regulations, blank checks for left-wing ideologues, and far less money and freedom for families, small businesses, and workers," McCarthy said in a statement.  

The plan comes after $1.9 trillion in deficit spending came last month, in the name of coronavirus relief, and will result in the largest tax increases since 1968, McCarthy said. 

"Like his so-called COVID bill that spent less than 9 percent to defeat the virus, Biden’s so-called infrastructure plan spends less than 6 percent to repair bridges, highways, and roads," McCarthy said. "The rest is a 'kitchen sink' of wasteful progressive demands, payoffs for labor unions and radical environmentalists, and job-killing regulations that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez[,D-N.Y.,] recently likened to the Green New Deal."

The plan, he added: 

• Allows $174 billion in subsidies for electric vehicles and $213 billion in subsidies for retrofitting homes, "which are among the most wasteful ways to reduce emissions, as Greg Ip points out in The Wall Street Journal.
• Mandates "one-size-fits-all environmental regulations," including 100% green energy requirements for federal buildings, while spending $100 billion to "decarbonize” the energy grid by 2035. "Note that similar mandates are already raising energy and home costs in states such as California despite subsidies, especially for working Americans," McCarthy said.
• Will fast-track $80 billion in new subsidies for Amtrak and its unions after Congress provided billions in aid to Amtrak last year.
• Revokes pro-worker Right to Work protections in 27 states. McCarthy said this will "infringe on workers' privacy and freedom of speech, and requires all federally-aided projects to have “project labor agreements,” and construction costs.

Meanwhile, the plan comes along with the "largest tax increase in a generation," McCarthy said. 

The hikes will raise the United States' corporate tax rate to the highest in the developed world, and higher than communist China, said McCarthy. It also adds billions of dollars for American workers and families, according to figures from the Joint Committee on Taxation, and asks other countries to raise their taxes as well. 

"Crushing tax hikes are the last thing American families, workers, and small businesses need or should have to worry about as we recover from the pandemic," McCarthy said. "It will kill jobs, reduce wages, and send American jobs overseas, including to China. Biden is breaking his pledge not to raise taxes on workers and families."

Republicans, meanwhile, reduced Americans' taxes with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, "one of the main reasons the economy was the best in a generation before the pandemic, and it is the reason the economy is rebounding so quickly," said McCarthy, pointing out that Democrats such as Vice President Kamala Harris have vowed to repeal it.

"Republicans are committed to investing and improving America’s infrastructure, but any plan must be targeted, paid for, and pro-worker," he concluded. "This is no place for political handouts, federal overreach, or the Green New Deal."

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