Senator John Kennedy opposes the $1.1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, citing the legislation’s cost, lack of infrastructure focus, and limited offerings for Louisiana.
The trillion-dollar package will increase deficits by 256 billion dollars over ten years per the Congressional Budget Office. Kennedy said that’s more than the GPD of Louisiana.
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“In my opinion, it is an inflation bomb, it is going to raise Louisiana prices at the gas pump and grocery store, and that is a tax,” said Kennedy. “Inflation is a tax that hits working people the hardest.”
Half of the funds utilized are repurposed COVID relief dollars that were allocated but never spent. About another 250 billion comes from a range of new taxes on businesses and the wealthy.
Kennedy’s colleague, the state’s senior Senator Bill Cassidy, supports the bill. He worked on it with a team of bipartisan lawmakers and argued that the economic benefits of building new infrastructure projects will spur development that offsets any deficit creation.
Kennedy called the bill “infrastructure, Green New Deal, and welfare”, contending that only about a quarter of it funds traditional hard infrastructure. He bemoaned the disproportionate amount bigger cities will receive, like 40 billion for “big city mass transit systems”. Kennedy argued Louisiana is only set to receive 1.2 billion dollars in new funding over ten years as a result of the bill, but Cassidy said the number is actually six billion.
Many Republicans oppose the legislation due to the roughly quarter trillion in new revenue it generates. Kennedy said some of those taxes directly target industries that are prominent in the state.
“This bill raises 14.5 billion dollars in new taxes over ten years on petrochemical manufacturers, of which there are many, beaucoup, in Louisiana,” said Kennedy who added another reason he did not support the bill was that the Senate refused to include Hurricane Laura relief funds for Southwest Louisiana.