GOPers who rant about socialism while privately begging for infrastructure cash name-checked
In a segment on CNN's New Day" on Friday morning, host Brianna Keilar and correspondent Isaac Dovere name-checked Republican members of Congress who have been privately begging for funding from President Joe Biden's massive infrastructure bill while at the same time complaining in public about the evils of socialism.
With a graphic scrolling behind them that included the names of Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rand Paul (R-KY), John Thune (R-SD), as well as Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), among others, the two noted the hypocrisy of railing against Biden's plan while trying to reap the political benefits back home with voters.
According to Keilar, "When President Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill into law last November he faced major backlash from some Republican lawmakers. Now many of those same Republicans are asking for money from the exact plan that they criticized as socialism."
"We're talking about dozens of Republicans who voted no, labeled it socialism in some cases, and now still want the money," the CNN host prompted Dovere.
"Right, dozens who wrote in letters that they wrote privately, obviously in their official capacity to the Department of Transportation, to Pete Buttigieg, the secretary there, saying, 'hey, as long as that money is there, that wouldn't be there if not for this bill, there are some grants in there that would benefit things in our districts and we think you should consider those grants. We'd like for some of that money to be given to our district for projects that they think are critical.'"
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"But, of course, that was an argument the administration was making about all of the things that were in there, saying we need that money, it's critical, and that's why the money needs to be voted for," he continued.
"Gain, this money that [Republican] Tom Emmer, for example, a congressman from Minnesota, the head of the House Republicans Campaign Committee called it a 'socialist wish list' is full of things that members of Congress who voted against it then put it in their wish list."
"It is intellectually inconsistent what we're seeing here. How are they explaining it?" host Keilar asked.
"They say as long as the money is there they might as well ask for it," he explained. "They say, some of them say we supported 20% of the bill but you couldn't ask us to vote for a bill that we disagreed with 80% of the things in there. But it still comes back to the fact that none of that money would be there if their way had been what had happened. That money is only there because the bill passed with some bipartisan support in the Senate and some in the House -- very limited though, very few Republican voted for this, even among these Republicans who decided there was enough there worth asking for."
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