Fact-checking a Biden administration official in real time perhaps for once, Chris Wallace got Pete Buttigieg to admit that he substantially overestimated the number of jobs potentially created by the infrastructure bill known as the American Jobs Plan, should it pass Congress, as opposed to what the economy would organically generate
Under questioning from the Fox News Channel host on Fox News Sunday, the politician and ex-Biden rival formerly known as Mayor Pete who is now the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, conceded that he was off by a lot.
Indeed, Buttigieg admitted, while dodging and weaving, that his claims lacked precision in that the actual number of jobs created is projected to be 2.7 million rather than 19 million over a ten-year period.
In the course of the discussion which included some crosstalk, Wallace, who hardly has compiled a reputation of posing tough questions to Democrats, noted that Buttigieg and others have been touting exaggerated numbers in trying to sell the plan.
“But it turns out the study you’re citing from Moody’s Analytics says the economy will add 16.3 million jobs without the infrastructure bill and 2.7 million more with it. So it doesn’t, as you said last Sunday, create 19 million jobs. Again, Secretary Buttigieg, why mislead folks?,” Wallace wondered.
“You’re right, I should have been more precise. The 19 million jobs that will be created are more than the jobs that will be created if we don’t do the plan and, it’s very important to make this point…,” the secretary responded.
“Two million, not 19 million,” Wallace interjected.
Without mentioning the $2 trillion price tag on the bill, Buttigieg than claimed that the legislation was still worthwhile if it increases employment by 2.7 million.
Wallace wouldn’t let Pete off the hook, though.
“But would you agree that you and the president, and Brian Deese, the economic advisor, on this program last week, you all exaggerated the jobs impact?”
At that point, Buttigieg’s fallback position was that other studies draw different conclusions.
Wallace still wasn’t satisfied, however. “You’re the one who cited Moody’s Analytics as 19 million, and it’s actually 2.7 million, which is a bunch, but it’s not what you said.”
The transportation secretary replied with a word salad that essentially again insisted that any amount of jobs created by the “wildly popular” bill (fueled by an enormous amount of taxpayer-funded spending) would be beneficial. In other words, it’s better than nothing.
Watch:
(Source: Fox News)
While in office, President Trump wanted to move on an infrastructure bill that was actually targeted on the infrastructure. This latest Big Government initiative by the Democrats evokes memories, however, of the so-called shovel-ready jobs during the big-spending Obama administration that were anything but.
Critics of the Biden plan purport it to spend billions on physical improvements, but it also devotes enormous sums of money to causes that are only tangentially related to public works projects, perhaps making it more about social engineering than construction engineering.
Along these lines, Wallace’s colleague Tucker Carlson, for example, argues that the package spends five percent on bridges, roads, and the like, and 95 percent on social engineering, and requiring a dramatic increase in taxes.
Tucker digs into Biden’s so-called infrastructure plan: ‘5% on infrastructure, 95% on social engineering’ https://t.co/eop0BkR5x5 pic.twitter.com/0Ds9frQOHg
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) April 2, 2021
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Robert Jonathan is a staff writer for BizPac Review. He is a longtime writer/editor for news aggregation websites and has also developed content in the legal and financial publishing sectors as well as for online education. He earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of Connecticut School of Law, “a law school the basketball teams can be proud of.”
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