Friday, June 26, 2020

Sam Graves: The Green New Deal is back and it's still a disaster

(From Sixth District Congressman Sam Graves)

America is at a crossroads. Our infrastructure is crumbling, and, in the midst of a global pandemic, millions of Americans are out of work. Rebuilding our infrastructure could be just the shot in the arm our country needs to rebuild. So, will we rise to the occasion, set aside our partisan differences and work together to rebuild America, or continue down the beaten trail that leads nowhere?

Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi chose the latter for all of us. Instead of allowing the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to build on years of bipartisan agreement and craft a commonsense bill that will rebuild our infrastructure, the Speaker completely highjacked the process.

Written behind closed doors, the Speaker’s $1.5 trillion “infrastructure” bill reads more like the Green New Deal than anything rooted in reality. It’s chock full of new mandates and bureaucratic hurdles that slow down projects and make it far harder to maintain our roads and bridges. It’s exactly what we don’t need.








When a bridge is failing in North Missouri, we want it fixed quickly and affordably. The only thing our County Commissioners or MODOT get out of more top-down government mandates is more cost, more time, and more frustration. Our states and counties deserve flexibility to get their projects done and this bill provides just the opposite.

Worse yet, despite spending countless hours drafting their Green New Infrastructure Disaster bill behind closed doors, nobody ever stopped to ask, “how are we going to pay for this?” They just passed the buck, so that future generations of Americans should be forced to foot the bill. It’s no wonder why either, since it’s estimated they would have to double the gas tax just to pay for a portion of their plan.

That’s the wrong thing to do, especially now when millions of Americans are struggling just to get by. Most level-headed Americans laughed the “Green New Deal” off as a joke, but now its principles are starting to show up in real legislation. It’s infected the already toxic political atmosphere in Washington and now it threatens to halt progress on things every American should be able to agree on.

We need to fix our roads and bridges. We need to expand broadband internet access. We need to maintain and fix our nation’s ports and harbors. These are all things that we should be able to work together on. It’s time to put up the political games and start working for the American people.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:36 AM

    Your party, and it is your party the republicans that have hampered the rebuilding of America by your leaders, specifically, Moscow Mitch, Blunt, Hawley, you, Long and others by not passing or initiating legislation to build roads, water structures, wastewater improvements and bridges that all have been shown to be needed. McConnell said that with Obama election nothing will be passed to benefit Americans.

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  2. Anonymous1:28 PM

    Cheap lip service and no action to actually govern or meet the needs of the American public by maintaining and improving the nation's infrastructure.
    .

    That's all these chronic loser fake republicans have.

    Donald Trump was sworn in as President in January 2017.

    At that moment, and for every single day for the next two years Republicans held control of the US House, the US Senate, and the Presidency.

    The only explanations for their do-nothing two years in 2017 and 2018 are either that they cannot govern, or that they simply don't care for everything they pay lip service to when campaigning for office.

    Or both.

    Now Shameless Sam Graves wants to talk about infrastructure? The people of Missouri need not worry. In just a few short months the Democratic party will win an election trifecta and Shameless Sam Graves will be taking all the credit for what the Democratic POTUS, and the House and Senate get done.

    This is when Shameless Sam Graves will commence to complaining about wasteful infrastructure spending and large federal deficits.

    Shameless Sam Graves complains more than a bus full of vegan Weight Watchers forced to eat at Cracker Barrel, but gets not much of anything done for the citizens of Missouri. That must be all his low information voters want and that's all Shameless Sam Graves has.

    Nothing but cheap lip service and political posturing with the help of the RNC talking points.

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