DES MOINES, Iowa – During his weekly Capitol Hill report on Wednesday, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sounded an alarm about the current inflation increase.
Shawntel Grove of Carroll Broadcasting asked Grassley about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell statement that Republicans are going to have “a hell of a fight” on their hands over the infrastructure bills since several Senate Democrats say they will not support a bill that doesn’t include funding for climate change, education, child and elder care, health care and electric vehicle adoption.
“I agree with Senator McConnell, but maybe for a different reason. Because I see a big increase in inflation. That scares me because I first went to Congress when inflation was 12, 13, 14 percent, and I don’t want to go through that again,” he answered.
“And spending $6 trillion of what you already want – a nine-tenths trillion has already been appropriated and signed by the president – would throw gasoline on the inflation fires. I would back up what I’m saying, because Larry Summers, the Harvard professor of economics, who was Secretary of Treasury for President Clinton, has said the same thing back in January, and again in April, to remind people that we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money,” Grassley added.
He noted that infrastructure spending is different than what the Democrats currently want.
“You build a highway today, and you ride that highway for 40 years before you tear it up and lay it down again. It’s not like the $400 billion that the President wants to spend on Medicaid, that’s going to be repeated every day, forever. And that’s entirely different. So if we can get the infrastructure bill separated from all this other stuff, I think there’s a good chance that we could get an infrastructure bill,” Grassley stated.
He said the problem is not the bipartisan group of Senators who put the bill together.
“The problem is that a week ago, the President held a news conference with a bipartisan group, saying he would sign it. And the next day, he said he wouldn’t sign it unless there was another $2 trillion bill that arrived at his desk at the same time. So he was feeling the heat from these very progressive people in his political party. So the problem is between Biden and Schumer and Pelosi are they going to move the infrastructure bill by itself and listen to the bipartisan agreement and do something in a bipartisan way? Are they going to listen to the partisans in their political party and have both bills go to the president (at) the same time? If that’s the case, it is not going to get 60 votes the United States Senate to move it,” Grassley explained.
Listen to the full interview below:
