(CNS News) -- When asked whether he will read all 2,702 pages of the infrastructure bill before voting on it, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) said, “I’m trying,” but added that having received the bill on Sunday night, he does not have enough time to read it all himself before the vote.
At the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, CNS News asked the senator, “Will you read all 2,702 pages of the infrastructure bill before voting on it?”
Senator Kennedy said, “I’m trying, but the bill’s twice as long as the Bible. We got it Sunday night. I’m trying to read as much as I can, my staff and I have split it up. But if your answer is do I have enough time to read it myself, of course not.”
In a follow-up question, CNS News asked, “And will any of your colleagues read the entire bill?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I know many are trying, but the people who decided to do this this way ought to hide their heads in a bag. It’s an insult to every taxpayer in America to ask us to spend $1.1 trillion dollars without knowing the details.”
The “bipartisan” Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would put $1.2 trillion dollars into “clean transportation infrastructure, clean water infrastructure, universal broadband infrastructure, clean power infrastructure, remediation of legacy pollution, and resilience to the changing climate,” according to a June 24 White House statement.
The House voted to pass its infrastructure bill on July 1. Should it pass in the Senate, it will be “the largest long-term investment in our infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century,” reads the White House statement.
While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is determined to hold a vote on the $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill before the Senate leaves for recess on Aug. 9, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are less enthusiastic about taking action on it.
Leader McConnell said on the Senate floor on Monday, “Our full consideration of this bill must not be choked off by any artificial timetable that our Democratic colleagues may have penciled out for political purposes.”