President Joe Biden, in Michigan to tout his Build Back Better agenda, is taking action "too little, too late" to salvage his infrastructure and social spending bills, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., told Newsmax on Tuesday.
"Everybody was telling him this isn't going to work," Luetkemeyer said on Newsmax's "National Report." "I can tell you from talking with Democrats last week before we left, they were not happy with what's going on. They're being kept out of the process.
"I think even the president, to a certain extent, was out of the process last week. So it's interesting to see him engaged at this point."
Biden on Monday told progressive Democrats that the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill would need to be dropped to between $1.9 trillion and $2.2 trillion so that it will be approved by party moderates.
Luetkemeyer told Newsmax that even if the bill's price tag is dropped, that doesn't mean the social education and other programs will be removed from the legislation.
"What they are going to do is just drop down the numbers on the programs but they will be trying to keep as many programs as possible, believing and hoping that down the road, those programs will continue and we will have to fund them at some point," he said. "This is why you have got to put a dagger in hard to this program right off the bat. Stop it right now, and that's what we're hoping to do be able to do."
Even if the price tag drops, the bill will be funded through increased taxes, and that is a "nonstarter" for Republicans," Luetkemeyer said.
"These are new programs that we don't need," he said. "We've got a lot of issues right now in this country we need to be addressing. We don't need to do it with higher taxes we don't need to with adding more programs with more cost to the federal government."
Democrats are seeing the spending bill as an "opportunity of a lifetime" to get to enact their "new socialist agenda, to get us down the road toward more socialism," Luetkemeyer said.
Meanwhile, Biden on Monday pressed Republican lawmakers to "get out of the way" and allow Democrats to increase the debt limit. Luetkemeyer said the president blamed the GOP for the national debt crisis because Democrats want a "blank check."
"This was a blank check for them to write this $3.5 trillion bill and fund it," Luetkemeyer said. "This isn't about funding the existing debt and ongoing expenses of government. This is about funding additional debt and additional programs. They want us to join them, to be able to go out here and institute socialism into our government in an even greater style."
Republican votes are needed to raise the debt ceiling, but the party's lawmakers will never vote for that, Luetkemeyer added.
"Good luck, Mr. President," Luetkemeyer said. "You haven't allowed us to participate in any single bill of major consequence yet in this administration for the first nine months and now you want us to help you pass a debt limit which basically institutionalizes all the socialist programs and wish lists for the last several years you haven't been able to get through? I don't think so."
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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