Joni Ernst: Americans Want Infrastructure, Not ‘Extraneous Things Democrats’ Are Shoving Through

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) questioned Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) move to schedule an infrastructure vote this week despite the fact that lawmakers have not even seen the text of a bill.

While Americans want to see issues related to infrastructures, such as roads and bridges, addressed, they are not interested in the hyperpartisan Democrat Party policy items — from the Green New Deal to amnesty for illegal aliens —  Democrats seek to jam through via a companion $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, the Iowa lawmaker explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.

“Americans want to see infrastructure like roads, bridges, [and] waterways. They don’t want to see all the extraneous things Democrats are trying to throw at us. We have not seen a bill. I have not seen the text of a bill and yet Chuck Schumer says we’re going to vote on it next week,” Ernst said. “I don’t know how we do that when we don’t know what’s in the package.”

The Iowa lawmaker told Breitbart News Saturday that she hopes the group of bipartisan lawmakers working on the package will tell Schumer to “slow down.”

“We’ve got to it on paper. We’ve got to get it out to our members so we can review this,” she said before speaking about the left’s companion reconciliation bill, which is filled with a series of left-wing agenda items. Notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) warned that she would effectively blow up the infrastructure bill if the Senate does not also pass a reconciliation bill that meets the left’s radical demands.

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“This is extremely disturbing,” Ernst said. “What they are planning to do, even if the bipartisan infrastructure bill gets done, what they are planning to do is what they are now calling ‘human infrastructure.’ Really what that means? A bunch of socialized programs that will expand what we think of as, you know, like caring for people. They call it the war on poverty, basically.”

Through the years, Ernst said, the country has spent “billions and billions” on the war on poverty.

“But simply making people comfortable in poverty doesn’t defeat poverty, but that’s what they’re planning to do, is continue to expand these existing …  get people comfortable living with less, reliant upon the government, and then it’s really hard to undo those social welfare programs,” she continued.

“This is an expansion of not only those social welfare programs, but also as you pointed out, things like the Green New Deal, entirely focusing on electric vehicles rather than continuing to work with the vehicles we have now, expanding that infrastructure, paying for, you know, the grid and updating so we can support those electric vehicles,” she continued, lamenting the “interesting dynamic” where Democrats seek to “jam through” a massive spending bill through reconciliation “with absolutely no Republicans supporting it.”

Democrats seek to load the $3.5 billion reconciliation bill with radical agenda items instead of having serious debates over these policy issues, she continued.

“And it’s not to save the taxpayer’s dollars. It’s to force them to pay more,” Ernst said.

Notably, Democrats hope to offer amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the massive reconciliation bill, despite the fact that amnesty has nothing to do with the budget.

“They can’t do this,” Ernst warned, explaining that reconciliation “is a process that is focused on the budget.”

“So what you will see coming from the left is they will do a bunch of policy gymnastics to try and get it fit in a reconciliation package. No. It should not,” she said.

“These are policy issues that we need to have debates on, we need to have discussions on. It needs to be done in open and transparent manners. They can’t just flip it into a bill, ram it through reconciliation when it is policy,” she added.