SHOCKED! ThisWeek’s Martha Raddatz stopped lie-in-progress from prolific Republican lying Senator

Generally, Martha Raddatz and other hosts allow Republicans to appear on their shows and lie without challenge. Sen. Barrasso failed this time.

Raddatz stop the lie-in-progress

Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso is one of the GOP’s more competent liars. Recently, a few hosts have been calling him out. It was Martha Raddatz’s turn today and she did it surprisingly well. I find more so than most, she lets Republicans get away with an inordinate amount of lies.

Barrasso started making the false claim that the American Jobs Plan only dedicated 6% of its funds to infrastructure like roads and bridged. Raddatz interrupted Barrasso.

“Senator, I got to stop you,” Martha Raddatz interjected. “The six percent for roads and bridges figures you and other GOP leaders have cited has been fact-checked multiple times. The total amount for what you have called traditional infrastructure, roads, bridges rails, airports, waterways, public transit, is more than 25% of the Biden plan.”

The Washington post reported the following.

Facts First: The GOP claim that just 7 percent of the bill’s spending applies to infrastructure is misleading. That being said, the debate over what technically counts as infrastructure is a real one, and much of the bill’s spending falls outside even the broadest of definitions.

Biden’s plan includes $621 billion for transportation, $400 billion for homecare service, $300 billion for manufacturing and $180 billion for research and development. Under their “traditional” definition of infrastructure, the GOP email limits what counts as infrastructure spending to include the $115 billion the plan allocates for modernizing highways, roads and main streets, $25 billion to airports and $17 billion for inland waterways, ports and ferries. However, Biden’s plan also calls for $85 billion to modernize public transit, $80 billion for Amtrak, $50 billion to safeguard critical infrastructure and $20 billion to improve road safety.

The GOP email does not provide an explanation for why those investments are not considered part of infrastructure. If we include the aforementioned $235 billion additional funding for transportation infrastructure, plus the $126 billion for building housing units, the $112 billion to build public schools and improve community college facilities, the $111 billion for water infrastructure, the $100 billion for digital infrastructure and the $100 billion for power infrastructure, infrastructure accounts for about 30% of the $2.65 trillion plan as announced by the White House. The Republicans could have fairly argued that a majority of the funds aren’t going directly to infrastructure projects but the 7% number relies on the GOP’s own narrow definition of infrastructure.

We cannot allow any politician to get away with the lies.