Exclusive — Rep. Steve Scalise: Americans ‘Revolted’ Against Green New Deal, Leftist Carveouts in Infrastructure Bill

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Thursday that the American people “revolted” against the Green New Deal and other far-left carveouts in the Democrats’ infrastructure bill.

Scalise spoke to Breitbart News as a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats struck a deal with President Joe Biden on an infrastructure bill. The tentative deal serves as a significantly scaled-down proposal compared to Biden’s original $2.3 trillion mammoth bill.

Scalise commented that Americans pushed back against the leftist carveouts in the bill, contending that it would not only eliminate American jobs but also would contain many climate change carveouts, such as electric vehicle charging stations.

Scalise told Breitbart News, “Oh, the idea that they were going to try to use an infrastructure bill to bring forward more social programs and Green New Deal initiatives that would kill jobs and unionizing home health care workers, I think the public revolted against that kind of abuse of power, and it’s one of the reasons that they haven’t been able to bring forward their radical spending and taxing bill. So, hopefully, the public stays engaged on this, and we get something that’s more rooted in common sense than radical socialist ideas.”

Scalise said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Democrats tried to raise taxes as part of their infrastructure proposal. However, he emphasized that he will continue to pressure swing district Democrats against supporting more radical aspects of the legislation.

Scalise said that raising taxes “was a big, a big part of their infrastructure bill and they don’t have the votes to raise taxes and we’ve been working very hard to get every Republican off of it, but also to put pressure on swing district Democrats to oppose taxes too because it would be devastating to the economy and I think that message is starting to get conveyed.”

During a press conference Thursday, Pelosi demanded that Congress put up a vote on a separate reconciliation bill that contains more leftist carveouts alongside the bipartisan legislation that presumably focuses more on physical infrastructure. She threatened to doom the bipartisan infrastructure bill if Congress does not hold a vote on the more partisan reconciliation bill.

“There ain’t going to be an infrastructure bill unless we have the reconciliation bill,” Pelosi said.

Scalise then noted that Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) proposed a House Republican alternative infrastructure bill funded by using unspent coronavirus aid money without raising taxes or the deficit.

“Sam Graves dropped that a few weeks ago that pays for infrastructure using primarily existing funds that are unspent from previous COVID bills, and there are hundreds of billions of dollars in unspent money,” Scalise said. “So, you don’t continue adding to the deficit which the Democrats right now are only focused on deficit spending and tax hikes, and we’re strongly opposed to that, and so far it looks like the talks are moving away from tax increases and more towards something more responsible.”