Buttigieg defends infrastructure bill after analysis shows $351B in deficit spending
Transportation secretary claimed that Republicans would not back the bill if it was not responsible
Pete Buttigieg clarifies plan for 'two separate' infrastructure packages
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gives an update on infrastructure negotiations and discusses Democrats' plan for a larger spending bill
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg once cautioned about his party's failure to properly address the deficit when he was running for president, but now he is defending a bipartisan infrastructure bill that the administration supports despite it including an estimated $351 billion in deficit spending.
That figure was featured in a Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis in its calculations of how the government would pay for $541 billion in new infrastructure spending. In a conversation with "Fox News Sunday," Buttigieg shrugged it off, insisting that the bill includes ways to pay for itself in responsible ways.
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"The pay-fors that are in this bill are appropriate for a bill that's going to grow the economy and grow U.S. productivity," he said.
To support this claim, Buttigieg asserted that Republicans would not back it if it was not true.
"You don't see the number of conservative Republicans supporting this bill that you do unless it's fiscally responsible," Buttigieg said.
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The Penn Wharton analysis also projected that the infrastructure bill would not lead to any significant economic growth until 2050, despite the bill's authors claiming it would generate $56 billion. Buttigieg disagreed.
"We think there's going to be enormous economic growth coming out of this," he said, pointing to other analyses like one from Moody's. His main defense of the bill's "economic power," however, was the broad support it has from bodies that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO.
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Buttigieg also argued that "the cost of doing nothing" would be too great, given the need to improve American roads and other aspects of infrastructure.
"You know we have another deficit that's not being talked about enough right now, and that's the infrastructure deficit," he said.