Higgins aide: La. benefits in infrastructure bill are overrated

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. House last week isn’t as good as it looks for Louisiana, said a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins at a Wednesday luncheon in Morgan City.
John Chautin, district director for Higgins, R-Lafayette and St. Mary Parish’s representative in Congress, pinch-hit for his boss at a St. Mary Chamber Business Luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City. Higgins, the scheduled speaker, couldn’t appear because he was needed for a House vote.
The infrastructure bill was the subject for months of wrangling between Democratic and Republican lawmakers. The measure started as a pet project of President Joe Biden with more than $3 trillion and included money for programs outside the traditional view of infrastructure, including child care, senior citizen benefits and free community college.
The $1.2 trillion approved this week resulted from a compromise that stripped much of the social spending and kept money for highways, bridges, ports, airports and broadband. U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, helped forge the compromise.
The word from Washington is that Louisiana is in line for $6 billion from the compromise legislation.
But Louisiana would have gotten $4.8 billion under other legislation anyway, Chautin said. What’s left isn’t enough to pay for major projects in Higgins’ 3rd District, including a new bridge in Lake Charles and the Interstate 49 connector, which is designed to raise Lafayette’s Evangeline Thruway between I-10 and Lafayette Regional Airport to interstate standards, he said.
Whether Chautin’s assertion is true depends on how you look at it.
The $4.8 billion appropriation for Louisiana was originally part of a public works bill. That bill would have increased infrastructure spending from the $3.7 billion that was authorized for Louisiana for 2016-20.
This year’s public works bill became part of the infrastructure legislation that passed this week. So, without the infrastructure bill, the energy and public works money may have passed on its own, or it may not have.
Chautin noted that Higgins voted against the $1.2 trillion compromise.
“The reason he is a hard no is that it’s filled with things that are not infrastructure,” Chautin said.
The bill means more taxes and more regulation for Louisiana people, he said. And Chautin called the 13 Republican House members who voted for the bill “traitors.”
A $1.75 trillion proposal, which includes some of the social spending from the original infrastructure bill and is awaiting congressional action, amounts to a “mass amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, Chautin said.
Border “encounters” logged by immigration authorities are up and topped 190,000 in September, “all a result of Sleepy Joe’s open border policy,” Chautin said.
The measure would grant undocumented workers what is being called a “parole” of up to 10 years. Democratic leaders say including the parole is the only way to put forward a bill that the Senate parliamentarian will rule is immune from a Republican filibuster.
“Democrats think all immigrants are Democrats,” Chautin said.
Chautin also accused Biden of setting energy policy that makes the United States reliant on hostile powers.