5 Things To Know About Biden’s Bloated Infrastructure Package

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, signed into law by President Joe Biden on Monday, is expected to add billions to the national deficit while expanding Washington’s influence in a flood of unnecessary spending.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act overcame hurdles in Congress with the help of 19 Republicans in the Senate and 13 more in the House, allowing the Biden administration and Democrats to claim a political victory on infrastructure.

“And I will tell you, in the House, for the House Republicans who voted for this, Joe Biden and the Democrats, their agenda was on the rails. It was failing. It was on the way to going down,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Sunday, a day before the bill’s signing. “And what those Republicans did is they breathed life into it; they gave Joe Biden a political win. He’ll now go across the country touting, look at this big bipartisan win.”

Biden has touted the legislation as “truly historic” and necessary to “rebuild the backbone of this nation,” the middle class. Republicans and other critics claim that the bill is generally wasteful and a vehicle for expanding Biden’s climate change agenda to transform the U.S. economy. Here are five of the most prominent criticisms of Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act:

The legislation adds up to $340 billion to the national deficit

Democrats have touted the infrastructure bill as a massive investment into the U.S. transportation system paid for without a single tax increase. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the legislation is set to add at least $340 billion to the national deficit and potentially more as time continues. As the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget reports:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just published its score of the recently unveiled bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Though its estimates are complicated to decipher, they show the legislation would directly add over $340 billion to the deficit and cost nearly $400 billion when including indirect effects from a higher transportation spending baseline; neither figure includes interest.

Proponents of the bill claim that the added spending has been covered through a series of “pay-fors,” or other means of increasing federal revenue without directly increasing taxes, such as selling oil out of the strategic reserve or reappropriating COVID-19 relief funds. Such strategies are generally unsuccessful at raising the amount of money lawmakers claim, however. As The Heritage Foundation reports:

The bill includes many provisions designed to pay for the spending spree, which are dubious,