The Blog

2021-

2021-08-19 b
IMPACTED COLON OF A CONGRESS

The "Infrastructure" Bill

This is getting monotonous, of course, but it does beg the question. What in god’s name are 19 Republicans doing shilling for a Green New Deal that even Sleepy Joe never endorsed during the campaign, and which is the handiwork of the hard core socialist left that these dudes speechify against every time they find its necessary to go back home to show their faces to the voters?

The short answer is that by and large these 19 mostly RINO (Republican In Name Only) Senators have been on the public teat for so long they have long ago lost any principles of Federalism, small government, fiscal rectitude and the lead role of private free enterprise they may have once upon a time possessed.

For instance, there is actually $65 billion in the bill for improving the nation’s broadband infrastructure, which surely warrants a WTF response. The cable and telecom industries are rolling in so much excess cash flow that they can afford to spend tens of billions every quarter on dividends and stock buybacks. Yet these Republican geniuses apparently now agree that its copacetic for the taxpayers to top up the massive CapEx budgets already being implemented by these quasi-utilities.

For want of doubt, it turns out that the 19 GOP senators have spent a combined 628 years on the public teat. And the very most senior among them is Senator Charles Grassley, who your editor first saw shuffling around the US House floor when he worked on Capitol Hill 45 years ago – at which point Chuck Grassley had already been on the public payroll for 26 years!

Thus, we have the distilled wisdom of Senator Grassley, who spent 16 years in the Iowa House of Reps (1959-1975), six years in the US House (1975-1981) and 40 year in the US Senate (1981-2021):

There is NO mileage tax or amnesty in the bipartisan senate infrastructure bill. It doesn’t raise taxes. We kept those things out. My focus is investing in infrastructure for Iowa’s future: roads, bridges, locks&dams, airports, rural broadband etc…..

There you have it. Grassley represents a form of degenerate Republicanism evolved over 62 years on the public payroll which is about as lame as it gets. Never support a tax, never cut a spending program and never miss an an opportunity to bring the pork back home.

In this case, his Iowa voters should be paying local taxes not looking to Washington to fix the hundreds of one-horse “Bridges of Madison County” that dot the state; and if they want faster internet, they should pay for it on their cable bills. But even principles that basic are too much for Washington lifers like Grassley to grasp.

Accordingly, the nation’s rotten fiscal estate is essentially beyond redemption. The Democrats are now and always have been aggressive statists, whether employing the explicit rhetoric of socialism or not. And now they have a Republican “opposition” that is so politically and intellectually bankrupt that it can’t get out of its own way.

Then again, perhaps one day voters will understand that when you are on the public teat for decades, your sell-by date has already long passed.

Years On The Public Payroll Among The 19 GOP Senators Who Gave Sleepy Joe His Green New Deal Boondoggle:

• Grassley: 62 years;
• McConnell: 54 years;
• Blount: 36 years;
• Burr: 27 years;
• Capito: 21 years;
• Hoeve: 21 years;
• Murkowski: 23 years;
• Portman: 32 years;
• Rish: 51 years;
• Sullivan: 28 years;
• Tillis: 19 years;
• Wicker: 45 years;
• Graham: 39 years;
• Collins: 46 years;
• Cramer: 28 years;
• Cassidy: 15 years;
• Fischer: 21 years;
• Romney: 19 years;
• Crapo: 37 years.

— former Congressman David A. Stockman

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