Press Releases

U.S. Congressman Garret Graves (South Louisiana) issued the following statement after President Biden tried to walk back his veto threat after threatening to veto his own bipartisan infrastructure deal if Congress doesn't include or add to the deal trillions of dollars in excessive funding for transit programs, rail and "welfare infrastructure."

"Cleanup at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Evidently, the ‘heads I win, tails you lose' approach created enough backlash for the president to attempt to chalk his veto threat up as a ‘flub.' Some of us are still skeptical of the deal – all of us remain confused about the commentary – but the main question continues to go unanswered: What will be the difference in outcomes if we just pour more money into a broken system?

"Let's get away from all the distractions and refocus the conversation around real priorities. We need solutions to our traffic and flooding problems. Dumping more money into the same system that has resulted in decades of problems with fewer solutions isn't progress. Every dollar put into the government's broken project delivery system or toward expanding the definition of infrastructure is a dollar taken away from actually turning dirt and pouring concrete for new roads and bridges. And if we go this route, it will mean no meaningful progress toward clearing a new Mississippi River crossing, no significant improvement to drainage in the Capitol, River or Bayou Regions, and no enhancements on hurricane and flood protection.

"If you're serious about addressing infrastructure, we need to fix the broken system that has become a study factory rather than a construction program."

To read more about the disaster of a negotiation so far, the STARTER Act, or the BUILDER Act (which would result in more roads and bridges being built because it addresses reforming the project delivery process) click here.

After President Biden issued his veto threat last week, Graves called the bipartisan deal a disaster and said:

"This supposed bipartisan infrastructure deal is a disaster," said Graves. "It's a fundamental mistake to let President Biden hold infrastructure hostage with the veto threat contingent on he and the left getting their partisan ‘human infrastructure' spending package. We have the president basically saying, ‘I get what I want, or nobody gets anything.' And if he does get his way, it will be hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on the expansion of failed social welfare programs and paying people to not work – instead of money going to build roads and bridges.

"This ‘deal' ignores the first-order, project delivery problems that are the reason why the government is failing at infrastructure to begin with – and by simply putting good money on top of bad, all it will do is increase the number of bad outcomes we already have. The STARTER Act we introduced would result in more roads and bridges being built because it addresses reforming the project delivery process."