Newt Gingrich on Fox News Channel's America's Newsroom | October 4, 2021

NEWT:

Sure. It is not a stunt if it works. What happened is the big government socialists particularly in the House decided blackmail is the only way that they can get it done. Remember, the infrastructure bill, some 60% of it, about 700 million dollars of it is the highway trust fund, which is very, very popular. So, there's a lot of pressure to be able to refund the highway trust fund, and the left, I think looking beyond Pelosi, beginning to maneuver to set up the power for the next speaker. They are very determined to hold the infrastructure bill hostage. And Sinema may not like it, but it is a legitimate parliamentary maneuver on behalf of people who want to get what they want to get. The question is will Sinema and Manchin hang tough? And if they do, does it all kind of melt down.

NEWT:

As the former speaker of the house, I have to confess Nancy Pelosi runs a dictatorship, and she runs it better than I thought possible, so maybe she can get it done. The problem they have got, and by the way, AOC is right. You could write this bill to only fund the program for two years. That would shrink the whole bill. It would be a lie, but it would shrink the whole bill. Now you would be down to the number that in theory Manchin and Sinema could vote for. I don't think they will get away with that, but they could. I get a sense that it is getting harder and harder to put this together. And that Biden on the road in the middle of 400,000 people crossing the border illegally with inflation rising, I'm not sure Biden is going to be actually able to convince anybody that they need to be for this.

NEWT:

Sure. It would be a perfectly reasonable as a strategy. The congressional budget office and others would score it as permanent because they say it is not going to be dropped. That is what happened to the current bill. They call at 3.5 trillion. Outside experts call at five and a half trillion because there are all sorts of sections to this bill that are not fully funded. You could, as a gimmick, come right down to $1.2 trillion, funded for two years, and then look at Sinema and Manchin say okay, we met your cap here that would be a very interesting game of chicken. It would be bad for the country. Terrible way to legislate. But if you are a big government socialist and you're desperate to get all this money, it's a rational strategy.