Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Sunday he’s “totally confident” President Joe Biden will sign an infrastructure bill now that he walked back earlier remarks linking his support to a second, more contentious social infrastructure package.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Romney said “the real challenge is wether the Democrats can get their act together and get it on his desk.”
“I am totally confident the president will sign it if it comes to his desk,” he declared, adding “the battle” it’s going to have is “not with Republicans. Republicans are going to support true infrastructure that doesn't raise taxes.”
According to Romney, Biden “made very clear” in his clarification over the weekend that he’ll sign the bipartisan package that has been presented, but that Democrats “want more than that, want other legislation as well.”
“We Republicans are saying, absolutely no,” he said to the social infrastructure wish list from Democrats. “Trillions of dollars of new spending is something we will not support. Fixing the infrastructure in our country and fixing our airports and roads and bridges and transit system and rail is something we will support. We can get the job done.”
Romney also blasted any potential federal efforts to mandate critical race theory in education programs,
“Parents should decide what kids are being taught, teachers and parents and school boards and local communities, even states can be involved in that,” he said.
“But let's keep the federal government out of telling people what can be taught in our schools. By the way, that is a sort of direction you see at places like China. Where they censor the media and censor what can be taught in schools. Let's not open the door to that in this country.”
Romney also weighed in on the threat the United States faces with China, compared with that from Russia, which he asserted “is in decline.”
“I think [Biden] recognizes that [Russia President Vladimir] Putin is a bad guy, that as President Biden indicated, he has killed people,” Romney said. “[Biden] pointed out as well that [Putin’s] political opponents have all ended up in jail or killed, or attempts to assassinate them have been carried out. He is an autocrat in the worst way, and represents a threat to the world.”
But he said “the real challenge is not just Russia poking a stick in our eye every chance they have,” saying it is instead “the emergence of China, which is on track to become the most powerful economy in the world and the most powerful military in the world.”
“That represents, I think, a greater challenge to us over the coming couple of decades,” Romney said. “I think the president is increasingly aware of that challenge as is Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken. I think they are working to pull together our alliances to wake up to that reality and to take action to dissuade China from a path of confrontation and military aggressiveness.”
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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