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President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) will make a joint appearance in Kentucky today to highlight the president’s $1.2 trillion spending spree.
Joined by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the two are to appear at a ceremony highlighting the $1.64 billion in funding recently awarded to the Brent Spence Bridge Corridor Project. The federal grant came under an over $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by Biden in 2021.
This episode is a snapshot of what "bi-partisan" looks like in today's political environment.
Be informed, not misled.
“To kick off the new year, @POTUS, @VP, @SecretaryPete, @MitchLandrieu46 will crisscross the country to highlight how the president’s work bringing Republicans, Independents, and Democrats together is growing our economy,” White House Deputy Communications Director Herbie Ziskend said via Twitter.
"Bi-partisan" is always a virtue. So is unity. Right?
Let's take a closer look.
Biden’s bipartisanship blitz will come a day after the Republicans retook control of the House yesterday following GOP gains in the November midterm elections. While the shift ends the Democrats’ unified political control of Congress and complicates Biden’s future legislative agenda, Biden and his team are also seeking cross-party support.
McConnell, of Kentucky, was among the Republicans who voted for the 2021 infrastructure law, despite many House Republicans opposing it, including House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). McConnell said the companion bridge “will be one of the bill’s crowning accomplishments.”
But that's not what some of the citizens---who actually pay for these kinds of "bi-partisan" activities think.
These are comments posted on social media after the 'bi-partisan" trip was announced.
"To vote for anything Dems have dreamed up to spend money on, is just showing how congressmen can be bought and why DC is a swamp."
"Senator McConnell is cut from the same deceitful cloth as Biden. Both are in politics for personal gain. Both are pathetic political pond scum."
“Joey Biden and Chipmunk McConnell to promote Corruption together on January 4th.”
And there was this among the thousands of posts:
"That’s a very deceptive picture. Northbound traffic exiting the Brent Spence Bridge to eastbound Fort Washington Way is RARELY that backed up, and when it is, it’s usually due to a traffic accident further eastward or northward."
As I read through the posts, there were some who support the "bi-partisan" bridge. But almost all expressed skepticism about the integrity of the actors.
About integrity.
He said this in part:
Designated party floor leaders have been a feature of the Senate for more than a hundred years. And no two have done the job exactly alike… [T]here’ve been leaders who rose to the job through lower-key, behind-the-scenes styles; who preferred to focus on serving their colleagues rather than dominating them. And that … is how Senator Michael Joseph Mansfield of Montana became the longest-serving Senate leader in American history until this morning.
However, McConnell’s historic moment comes as he worked against conservatives in 2022.
He defunded conservative midterm campaigns, funded establishment candidates against conservatives, helped and enabled President Joe Biden to pass far-left legislation, voted to give Ukraine over $100 billion dollars, supported gun control measures, and refused to condemn Biden’s speech in Philadelphia that labeled “MAGA Republicans” a threat to the nation.
McConnell’s political position has remained consistent over time, which has infuriated many of his critics. Under McConnell’s Senate leadership, the national debt has risen by nearly $20 trillion, illegal immigration has continued, and real wages for American workers have not grown. Obamacare was enacted in 2010. Big banks were bailed out in 2008, and social media companies have silenced individuals without repercussions.
Biden and McConnell's bill is flawed and misleading.
Back when it was introduced the Heritage Foundation said, "President Biden is proposing a massive spending plan to supposedly build and rebuild America's infrastructure. While the plan relies on the moderate and uncontroversial term “infrastructure,” less than 5% would actually go toward traditional road infrastructure projects. Rather, it will be spent on corporate welfare, tax credits, and the left's radical 'green' agenda."
The Washington Post, the New York Times, and other leftist news operations said that may have been true in the first draft, but it was no longer true.
However, honest experts who have read the bill in its final draft say it is still very misleading, and not really about roads and bridges.
Heritage said, "Traditionally, infrastructure is roads, bridges, tunnels, and airports. Everything's infrastructure now."
But they're taking this buzzword that polls well, and they're trying to brand everything as infrastructure. But only 5% of this more than $2 trillion spending bill is what people actually think is infrastructure.
And most of that 5% of spending for roads and bridges is just going to go for maintenance of existing infrastructure that we already have. It's not going to be building new lanes of highway or helping to reduce congestion. It's just going to be simple maintenance.
It's not about the bill, and it's not really about partisanship.
This moment of President Biden and Mitch McConnell "coming together" is meaningless in my opinion. At best it's a moment of nonpartisan virtue signaling. At worst it's a corrupt attempt to get a bridge named for Mitch, and who knows how many millions will find their way back to Biden--- the "Big Guy" and his family from beneficiaries of the bloated, misleading so-called "infrastructure bill?"?
Colonist and early American leader William Penn characterized our current events:
"Governments like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and move by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good and the government cannot be bad...But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn...Though good laws do well, good men do better; for good laws may lack good men and be abolished or invaded by ill men; but good men will never want good laws or suffer [allow] bad ones."
President Garfield said nearly a hundred years after our founding,
"Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature...If the next generation does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces."
Founder Samuel Adams said, "The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men."
It's time for good people to stand strong for what is right, and true, and pure, and shed the cloak of pretense and virtue signaling that too many present-day politicians have wrapped themselves with.
And it's time to be very very curious regarding the men and the women we have elected to public office.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.