(CNS News) — When asked whether he will read all 2,702 pages of the infrastructure bill before voting on it, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, “Nope,” because “I don’t need to read 2,700 pages to know why I’m going to vote no.”
At the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, CNS News asked the senator, “Will you read all 2,702 pages of the infrastructure bill before voting on it?”
Senator Cruz said, “Nope, I’m going to vote no, and I don’t need to read 2,700 pages to know why I’m going to vote no.”
“$1.2 trillion dollars is way too much money, and it would be one thing if this bill were offered in exchange for not taking up the Democrats’ massive tax and spending $3.5 trillion-dollar bill immediately thereafter, but that’s not how this bill is being put forward,” he said. “This bill is being put forward on top of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion-dollar tax and spend bill.”
Senator Cruz expressed his concern over how the bills would affect the current and future state of the nation’s economy.
“We are bankrupting the country,” he said. “We are seeing inflation rising all across the nation. We’ve already spent $2 trillion dollars that Democrats are ー there’s an old line that Democrats are spending like drunken sailors, although, as Reagan observed, that’s not fair to the sailors because at least they’re spending their own money.”
The supposedly “bipartisan” Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would put $1.2 trillion dollars into “clean transportation infrastructure, clean water infrastructure, universal broadband infrastructure, clean power infrastructure, remediation of legacy pollution, and resilience to the changing climate,” according to a June 24 White House statement.
The House voted to pass the infrastructure bill on July 1. Should it pass in the Senate, it will be “the largest long-term investment in our infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century,” reads the White House statement.
While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is determined to hold a vote on the $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill before the Senate leaves for recess on Aug. 9, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are less enthusiastic about taking action on it.
Leader McConnell said on the Senate floor on Monday, “Our full consideration of this bill must not be choked off by any artificial timetable that our Democratic colleagues may have penciled out for political purposes.”