During a Monday appearance on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) described President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan as having “more red flags than the Chinese embassy.”
With Biden set to meet with a group of lawmakers over the package that only a small portion goes toward infrastructure, Kennedy said he hopes the Biden administration is more open and truthful about their proposal. He urged his colleagues to press Biden about the plan.
Partial transcript as follows:
KENNEDY: Look, President Biden has invited some of my colleagues today to visit the White House to talk about it, and I think that’s a great thing. And here’s what I hope my colleagues tell President Biden: I hope they say, “Look, Mr. President, we appreciate the invitation to come over. The White House cookies are great. We’ve got some questions though, because this thing you’ve proposed has more red flags than the Chinese embassy.”
Number one: “Show us a list of the projects. We can keep debating what kind of bill this is, but show us a list of the projects you have in mind. You’re asking us to get in the van — show us the candy first.”
Number two: “Mr. President, no offense, but stop the Niagara of lies and tell your staff to stop it. It’s embarrassing. We can read the Moody’s Analytics report. tell the truth about this thing.”
Number three: “We get it. We understand that a big part of your plan is the Green New Deal. So, we have a fundamental question, Mr. President. Before we spend another squillion dollars — I think the whole plan costs $2.3 trillion with a $1.7 trillion tax increase … before we do all that, tell us how much your Green New Deal is going to lower world temperature and over what period of time. I mean, that’s why we’re doing this, right? The climate activists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, part of the U.N., says that we can only allow world temperatures to rise another one degree before we have an environmental apocalypse. That’s the theory behind all of this. OK, tell us how much your plan is going to lower world temperatures.”
And number four: “Mr. President, we respect you, but you have to tell us how many jobs your corporate income tax increase is going to cost America. When you tax something, you get less of it. Duh. Our companies compete with every other country in the world for business, given the fact we live in a global economy and capital is mobile. And any person who has even a casual relationship with the discipline of economics knows that corporations don’t pay taxes — people do. Workers pay them in lower wages, investors pay them in lower returns, we pay them in higher prices. Tell us how this is going to impact the American consumer. And let’s be honest with each other.”
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