The Biden administration said it wants to work with Republicans to get its $2 trillion infrastructure bill through, but Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Monday he's not expecting that to happen.
"If you think this is an infrastructure deal, you probably better stay away from sharp objects," Kennedy said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "This is a Green New Deal."
He added he would do "old man backflips" if the Biden administration will meet with Republicans on the measure, but he's not holding out hope for that.
The measure, meanwhile, is a "welfare and reparations bill" that only allows less than 10% to be spent on actual infrastructure "and we don't even know what the projects are," Kennedy said.
"You know who picks the projects?" he said. "Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi[, D-Calif.], Sen [Chuck] Schumer[, D-N.Y.], and President [Joe] Biden. One need not be clairvoyant to see that their projects are going to end up in New York and California and blue states, so there you have it.
You've got a political slush fund, and you can say and maybe even believe that two plus two equals five, but just because you say it doesn't make it true. The correct answer is four."
In addition, the bill is "outrageously expensive" and Americans will pay for it through more debt and higher taxes, said Kennedy.
The senator also discussed the growing immigration crisis and accused Biden of not caring how many people come into the country.
Biden was mistaken by putting Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of trying to combat the situation, he added.
"No disrespect to the vice president," Kennedy said. "I know her well and I respect her, but she believes in open borders. Making her the illegal immigration czar as I said the other day is like making El Chapo the drug czar."
He added that the administration's focus on the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras could also fail if all it does is "take billions and billions of American taxpayer money" and give it to the governments there" rather than set up processing centers to allow people to apply for refugee status without traveling to the U.S. border.
Kennedy also discussed Major League Baseball pulling its All-Star game and draft out of Atlanta in protest over Georgia's new voter laws
He accused Biden of lying to Americans about the measure with his claims that it is like the Jim Crow era.
"I think President Biden has done the country a great disservice by not telling the truth about this bill," Kennedy said. "No. 2, the commissioner of baseball is Rob Manfred [and] he's just made baseball a blue sport. I don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, his attendance is declining. If it were my job I would try to be adding fans.
"The only thing I can figure is Manfred is part of the managerial elite, the entrenched politicians, the bureaucrats, certain members of the media, the academics, the corporate phonies who think they are smarter and more virtuous than the people they make money off of."
Manfred, he added, "just wet his pants in delight at the chance to virtue signal here, and all he did was make Major League Baseball a blue sport. I don't get it."
The senator further commented on the revelations being shared by Biden's son, Hunter, through his frequent interviews to promote his memoirs.
"He's trying to send a message that he is not responsible for anything that he does because he's an addict, and that's an interesting point of view," Kennedy said. "I do believe addiction it's a crippling disease, but I also believe in free will and personal responsibility and I don't think you can be absolved of everything you do wrong in this world, no matter whether you're an addict or not or how you're feeling or what somebody did to you."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.