What About Republicans Who Backed “Infrastructure” Pork?

CLAY: Late on Friday night — so late, in fact, that many people may well have missed it, especially as you rolled into your busy Saturdays and Sundays — the Democrats passed the infrastructure bill in the House that had been pending since all the way back in August. Ron Klain — who is maybe the default president of the United States given that Joe Biden can barely string a couple of functional sentences together — exulted over the passage and said it was a result of Tuesday’s midterm — or, I guess, off-midterm — elections.

KLAIN: The voters sent a message on Tuesday. They wanted to see more action in Washington. They wanted to see things move more quickly, and — and three days later Congress responded, passing the president’s infrastructure bill. But — but a lot of work went into getting us there over the past few months. So I don’t think the election alone put it over the line.

What put it over the line was President Biden starting back in April putting it before the country, working with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to get it the law the Senate in August, working with a broad coalition in the House to finally pass it. You know, Chuck, this is the oldest show on television as you know.

As long as this show has been on the air, people have come on the show and said we should make a massive investment in infrastructure to grow the economy, strengthen the thing. We finally did it on Friday. That’s the bottom line for us, I think.

CLAY: Okay, Buck, here’s the question. This had already received the votes of 19 Republicans in the Senate, this infrastructure bill. Thirteen, I believe, was the total Republicans in the House voted for this infrastructure bill. If Republicans had stood strong and not supported any of the infrastructure, then this bill would not have been able to pass ’cause Democrats are revolts from the left wing in their party, the AOC crew.

So, Buck, the reason they did this ostensibly is because they believe — now that infrastructure has passed — that it’s going to make it very hard for the Build Back Better agenda, for the budget reconciliation bill, whatever collar figure you want to put on it, one seven five, three five, four trillion, the massive bill that Joe Biden is trying to push through. Right move, wrong move for Republicans in the House to help this pass?

BUCK: Oh, Clay, Clay, there are a lot of, all of you tonight are very upset about this.

CLAY: I know.

BUCK: You’ve got even here in New York City one of the members of Congress, Nicole Malliotakis — who I interviewed, I know a little bit from work — she voted along with it. I mean, there are people who are getting a lot of heat, getting a lot of heat because, for them, the infrastructure thing, this turns into a pork situation. In New York City, for example, it is gonna get a lot of money out of this.

So if you represent a district in New York City it becomes very tempting even as a Republican. Because, yeah, the national level GOP might get mad at you but the folks that are actually in your district when they start hearing about money for this, money for that? That’s where I think someone went wrong, Clay. I don’t… They shouldn’t have gone along with it, and I think some of them are gonna get primaried because of it. That’s what I see happening.

CLAY: They should have held the line. To me, it’s a big gamble because they guarantee a trillion dollars in spending, and now they’re hoping that you’re gonna blow up a couple of trillion dollars in spending, and you’re basically relying on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate — the Arizona and the West Virginia senators in the Democratic Party — to blow this thing up and torpedo it. That feels like a really big gamble to me, Buck.