By JOHNNY KRAMPIS | October, 2021

As a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill moved toward a possible House vote, Republican leadership in Wisconsin seethed over the amount and the kind of pork stuffed into it.  

The Biden administration and its allies in Congress “have stretched the definition of infrastructure beyond recognition in their attempt to justify trillions of dollars in new spending,” state Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) told the Badger Institute in an email.  

As our magazine went to print, the infrastructure bill was knotted up in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he hoped to get the bill and another $3.5 trillion spending bill passed by the end of October. 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), one of the 30 “no votes when the Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in August, says he initially voted for the CARES Act 18 months ago, calculating that about $700 billion was going to be spent on infrastructure. 

Johnson criticized his 19 Republican colleagues who didn’t recognize that and voted for another round of so-called infrastructure spending. “That should have been the Republican position,” he said. “We shouldn’t be signing up to the Green New Deal, Part I.” 

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