Ray Cardello April 8, 2021

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg made a stop on Meet the Press this past Sunday to give host Chuck Todd and the American people a lesson in new math. Since Chuck did not respond to Secretary Pete, we can assume he agreed or simply didn’t understand the equation. The American people are not so ignorant. The math is simply wrong.

The Secretary, and by the way, what makes him qualified to handle any transportation issue, was claiming that the vision was fully funded. To quote, “The vision the president has put forward is fully paid for,” says @SecretaryPete of Pres. Biden’s infrastructure plan. That would seem to indicate on the surface that the $2 Trillion is in the bank and the check to pay for the bill is ready to be cut. Far from the truth.

He went on to say that the bill will be funded by increasing the corporate tax rate and paying for the bill with the new tax revenue over the next 15 years. So by the new math, according to Secretary Pete, even though it will take 15 years to come up with the funds, it is fully paid for. How could Chuck Todd, who professes to be a journalist, allow such a ridiculous statement to go unchallenged?

So just a couple of questions here. When did you ever see money applied to the National Debt? With nearly $6 Trillion spent in his first three months, it is safe to say that Biden is on a spending spree like no other. Secondly, to say that anything will be totally funded in 15 years is to admit that there is no intention to ever pay for the plan. To say so is simply to placate the unknowing. Those that believe that politicians are born honest, that they would never deceive us. How sweet to be so naive.

These bills that are being put together, pages numbered in the thousands are not like anything we experienced in the years behind us. In the old days, a bill did at least deal with the issue at hand with a side of Pork Hash. Today, a bill may have 10% of it contents associated with the purpose of the bill and the remaining pages are a wishlist of projects designed to satisfy lobbyists and donors/ There is no shame in adding totally convoluted items such as tunnels from Frisco to Silicon Valley or a bridge from New York to Canada in a bill that is supposed to be Covid Relief. No longer is it Pork Side Dishes. It is now a full blown Pig Roast and it is okay with most politicians.

Back to Pete. This blog post was supposed to be about Pete from South Bend but seriously, he is such a minor player that I cannot waste more space to this role player. This is a Transportation Secretary who suggested we have too many roads and his plan would be to remove some and that we need to consider bike trails…..really……would that be for the family summer cross country trek? You cannot take anything this guy says seriously.. So let Pete make the weekend talking head tour. Who listens anyway? Not since Susan Rice went on the “It was a Video” tour has someone been so obviously out of their league. So let’s let them jockey for position. Let them justify the pork but let’s hope that this is not allowed to go through the Senate on a simple majority vote. If it does, Biden will have spent nearly $6 Trillion in three months without a single Republican vote. How’s that for being a unifier?