The Senate moved towards passing the Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending plan on Sunday with support from some Republicans like Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-ND, who explained his reasons for backing the bill on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
The North Dakota Republican argued that the bill contains valuable spending for basic infrastructure including roads, bridges and airports, which are essential for the movement of goods throughout the nation.
“Of the $1.2 trillion, $450 billion – that’s over a third of it – is not just infrastructure, it’s roads and bridges specifically,” Cramer told host Maria Bartiromo. “In addition to that, there’s ports, waterways, railroads, airports broadband, all of which are critical to the movement of goods and services around this country and around the world.”
A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Kim Strassel on Thursday suggested the spending plan was a fast-track to the Left’s Green New Deal agenda, but Cramer denied her claim, calling her take “very wrong” in both math and purpose.
The plan allocates billions to sectors such as resilience and water storage, power infrastructure and electric vehicles – all of which are arguably a precursor to green living.
“Cybersecurity and resiliency of the grid is [sic] not exclusive to the Green New Deal,” the Senator said. “I think we’ve all experienced the problems with a lack of resiliency to our energy infrastructure. The colonial pipeline cyber-attack was a pretty good example of that.”
“Are there some things missing that we [Republicans] would love? Of course, there are,” he went on. “But this is a 50-50 senate. Democrats have a majority in the House and the White House so you’re going to have to take some of those things to get all the other really good things.”
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Cramer defended that even some of the Democrats’ items included in their interest all relate back to the overall upkeep of “hard” infrastructure in America.
One Republican lawmaker opposed speeding up the vote on the nation’s largest spending package, according to Reuters, holding up officially passing the bill. The Senate is expected to hold two procedural votes on Sunday evening, unless an agreement on amendments is made earlier.
