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.