Senator John Thune (R-SD) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that some Republicans would vote for a smaller infrastructure package.
However, he said that does not include President Biden’s $2 trillion proposal.
Thune said, “I think what we ought to be looking at this in terms of his having let’s do an infrastructure bill, the president wants to do in an infrastructure bill, the sort of big, bold, utopian European-style socialism proposal that they’ve laid out there is something they can try can to and do another time. If they are sincere about doing something on infrastructure, I think there are Republicans who would vote for it. How we pay for it, I think we ought to repurpose some of the money that’s already been spent or appropriate it least it hasn’t been spent in all these previous COVID bills. We just add $350 billion to a lot of states out there, and this would be a good use for those funds.”
He added, “I think water, wastewater, highways, roads, bridges, perhaps broadband can all be included in that category. Our state of South Dakota obviously depends upon the highway bill funding in order to upkeep and maintain a lot of the roads and bridges in our state, and we would welcome, as I said before, an infrastructure bill, which we do about every five years. I think the tax increases that are included in here are something that would be very crushing to the economy. You’re talking about increasing the rate from 21% to 28% or 33% tax increase on businesses in this country or looking to create jobs. It doesn’t create sense after we just reformed the tax code in 2017 and tried to make our tax code more competitive in the global marketplace, to then raise taxes and make the United States the highest taxed place to do business in the world. I don’t think that’s a good way to grow our economy.”
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