John Kennedy rips Democrat bill as an 'orgy of spending'
Louisiana Senator says an enormous amount of 'Endless Frontier Act' is wasteful on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'
Senator John N. Kennedy, R-La., slammed the Endless Frontiers Act as a bloated, somewhat misrepresented piece of legislation its proponents say will help the U.S. be more competitive with China in the manufacturing and technology spaces.
Sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the bill would establish a directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for "technology and innovation", among other directives – but Kennedy warned "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that it is a $130-billion-and-counting boondoggle.
Of its 13 co-sponsors, about half are Republicans, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Steve Daines of Montana.
Kennedy, however, called the bill an "orgy of spending porn", and described its chief sponsor – Schumer – as excited to have as much additional directives added to the bill by other lawmakers as possible, so as to better guarantee the package passes.
"It started out at $40 billion, the budget office tells me it is up to $200 billion and growing like Kudzu and it's probably going to pass because -- I say this gently -- some of my Republican colleagues have swapped brains with the Democrats and are going to vote for it," he said.
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"Senator Schumer is ecstatic and running around like a 5-year-old in a Batman costume."
Kennedy told Carlson the bill includes some foreign aid, which the host noted is on its face counterintuitive to its stated purpose of increasing American industrial competitiveness.
"I don't know why we have to give money to countries that hate us, they should be able to hate us for free," said Kennedy.
"$50 billion [goes] to the Big Tech semiconductor companies. We all know how broke Big Tech is, I guess they can use the money to develop a more efficient algorithms to censor us. $80 billion to the infamous National Science Foundation [which] spent $500,000 in taxpayer money studying how long it takes pandas to poop."
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"I say it is a orgy of spending. I'm not saying every penny is wasteful, I'm saying an enormous amount is wasteful and here … President Biden is talking about raising taxes for infrastructure, why can't we use some of this money to pay for infrastructure? That's all I'm saying. Everybody in Washington is for ‘fiscal responsibility’.
"They want to cut spending, but everybody in Washington – it's like going to heaven, they want to go to heaven but they don't want to take the trip."
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