current secretary of transportation and former Indiana Mayor Pete Budha. Judge, I am not mayor
of Indiana. What was it? South Bend, Indiana. I believe he was the mayor of a Pete Budha judge.
Had to put a stop once and for all to the absurd and ridiculous talking points about
Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. Having to explain to ABC's George Stephanopoulos,
humans need water to live, which is why plumbing is part of infrastructure.
Having to explain Mayor Pete did to Fox hosts that electricity is now important enough to homosapiens
that spending money on the grid as part of infrastructure makes sense. And if you haven't
heard the bad faith and or ignorant responses to Biden's infrastructure bill, they have essentially
been one of two things. Some people on the right have reacted to Biden's infrastructure bill
with the typical, oh, it's too expensive. We can't afford it. What about the debt? What about
the deficit type responses that they never give when they're talking about a Republican president
going to war? Never. Those are never concerns. When a Republican president wants to go to war,
then there is a lot of stuff like this isn't really infrastructure spending. It's something
else. Here's an example. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem said lots of this stuff is an
infrastructure. It's money for housing and pipes. It's on a call with the White House today with all
the governors talking about the specifics of this package. And I was shocked by how much doesn't go
into infrastructure. It goes into research and development. It goes into housing and
pipes and different initiatives, green energy. And it really is not an honest conversation we have.
So she takes issue with research. How does she imagine we would improve infrastructure
without doing research? I don't know. Every infrastructure advancement in human history
came thanks to the research that was done before it. When we replace one type of electric grid with
another, it's because somewhere in the middle of their research was done. When we improve the way
that we build bridges, it's because sometime in the interim research was done. This is like when
there's a hurricane and the relief bill includes money to figure out how can we mitigate this being
so bad the next time there's another hurricane. And Republicans say some of that money is not
really for relief, right? Well, it's money so that next time it doesn't do as much damage
by improving infrastructure or whatever else needs to be done. And, of course, pipes, water,
that's infrastructure. So here is Mayor Pete Buttigieg on ABC over the weekend explaining to
George Stephanopoulos, you know, humans need water to live, which is why plumbing is part of this,
that only about five percent of this bill goes for traditional roads and bridges.
You've got 20 percent caregiving for the elderly, about 13 percent for investments
in like the green New Deal. So why not focus on that traditional core infrastructure?
Well, let's be clear. There's a lot more than roads and bridges that are part of infrastructure.
I heard the governor of South Dakota recently saying this is an infrastructure. It's got
money for pipes. Will we believe that pipes are infrastructure because you need water to live?
And to many families now live with the threat of lead poisoning. That's absolutely infrastructure.
So there's that. And then on FOX News here, our Bill Hemmer
and Dana Perino asking Mayor Pete. But but but. But but, Secretary, there's all this spending
on non infrastructure stuff. Take a listen. We crunched the numbers. We find that five point
five percent of the two trillion dollar, five point six of the two trillion dollar proposal is
only dedicated to roads and bridges. Why is that? Well, we're talking about roads and bridges. We're
talking about rail and transit. We're talking about airports and ports. As you mentioned,
we're talking about things like the grid. I don't know why anybody would say it's a mistake to
invest in the grid after what we just witnessed in Texas. We saw US citizens living in Texas,
melting snow in. Are bathtub's to be able to flush their toilets in the United States of America?
That is unacceptable. So, yes, infrastructure includes energy infrastructure. You know what
else is part of infrastructure now? Broadband. I'm proud of the fact, even though it's a little
outside my lane on the transportation side, I'm proud of the fact that we're going to finally get
broadband out to every American because we know, especially in rural areas, how much that's cutting
people off from opportunity. Good infrastructure planning is always about looking to the future.
Why are they obsessed with this idea that only roads and bridges count as infrastructure? The
electrical grid, green energy, plumbing, high speed Internet, this is all infrastructure. And
for some of the less ignorant conservatives, there's a bad faith aspect here. There's an
analogy here to the Postal Service. Why is it that Republicans want to kneecap the Postal Service?
It's because they don't want the government in the business of delivering mail. Now, the Postal
Service is a sort of pseudo government entity. But the point is conservatives want the Postal Service
gone so that for profit companies like DHL, FedEx and UPS will get more market share that, you know,
there's a philosophical underpinning to that. Similarly with this infrastructure thing, many
right wingers see anything the government gets involved in as a loss for private industry. Now,
the reality is that it's misguided. When we talk about the government doing infrastructure. This
is not you know, I know they love to say it is, but the U.S. is not a communist country where
most construction work is done by government owned companies. Most of the infrastructure
work will be done by private companies. They will be hired by the government. Yes,
but it's still going to be work that goes out to private companies. So that's one group.
Then you have people who just don't know what's going on. They have like they don't
understand the world around them and they think that, you know, the electrical grid
really isn't part of infrastructure. And it's disturbing that Mayor Pete has to even explain
this stuff to people who you would imagine know about it. The Commons, we all benefit
from it and we help maintain it either directly or through tax money, clean water, air
access to electricity in some places, increasingly broadband. These are just examples. And of course,
there is nothing more economically stimulative than great infrastructure, better airports,
so that people more easily and eagerly come to the United States to do business.
Have you seen airports in other parts of the world short of you know, there's a few terminals at a
few airports in the United States that are at the caliber of what global airports are.
But by and large, our airports are put to shame by airports in other countries who will go to stores
if the roads are unusable or the bridges are unsafe. This is economically stimulative for the
very private businesses that Republicans claim to prioritize and want to support. It's in a sense,
a really shrewd business move. It's called cost externalization. You're a business.
You're able to externalize a bunch of costs for infrastructure that you benefit from.
They're building the infrastructure so that customers can go and do business with you,
with other people's tax money, like you would think they would absolutely love it. Republicans
should love it. But any time government is, quote, spending money, they just reflexively are against
it. Any time it's proposed by Democrats, they reflexively are against it. Remember,
Democrats voted for both of Trump's covid stimulus bills. Why? Because even though it was Trump,
it was the right thing to do. Yeah, it wasn't big enough. It was too slow. OK, flip it.
Republicans all of a sudden don't want covid stimulus when it's Democrats controlling
the House, Senate and the White House. These people are pathetic. These people are pathetic.