President Biden appeared to be unfamiliar Monday with the specifics of the massive spending bill, called the Deflation Act, that Senate Democrats passed Sunday, saying only that it funds health care “and God knows what else.”
Moments earlier, the president misstated the size of last year’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill as he toured flood damage in Kentucky.
“We’ve never done this before, but because of a number of things that we’ve done on a bipartisan basis — like a billion, two hundred million dollar infrastructure project — like what we’re doing today, we passed yesterday, helping take care of everything from health care to God knows what else,” Biden said, standing outside a flood-damaged home on his first official trip since recovering from a “recurring” case of COVID-19.
“What we’re going to do is … we’re going to see, for example, if they need to run a new water line into the community,” the president stammered. “There’s no reason they can’t at the same time dig a line that puts in a whole new state-of-the-art line for internet connections.” Why? Why can’t we do this? So it will be different. We will come back better than before.”
As President Biden toured flood damage in Kentucky, he said the recently passed Senate Inflation Relief Act funds health care and “God knows what else.”
Biden spoke for only about four minutes, most of the time with his back to the cameras as he surveyed the buildings and people affected by the recent flooding.
At one point in his remarks, the president, who turns 80 in November, suggested it might be possible to control the weather before jokingly telling his storm-ravaged audience, which included Democratic Commonwealth Gov. Andy Beshear and Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) that it’s time to “run laps.”
“We are all Americans. Everyone has to help. We have the capacity to do that. It’s not like it’s out of our control. The weather may be out of our control for now. But it’s not out of our control,” Biden said.
Biden misstated the size of last year’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill during his speech. REUTERS The law, passed on Sunday, contributes almost $400 billion to environmental programs to fight climate change. Reuters
The Senate-passed bill, which is expected to pass the House as early as Friday, provides nearly $400 billion for environmental programs, including tax credits of up to $7,000 to purchase electric vehicles and an estimated $64 billion in extensions of more generous COVID-19 Obamacare subsidies.
The costs are offset by new taxes on corporations, including a new 15% corporate minimum tax, increased IRS enforcement and allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices.
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