Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso pretends he speaks for the "American people," but he's lying when he says there's not support for child care, elder care, and free community college in Biden's Build Back Better Act. Here he is with Fox's Maria Bartiromo this Sunday, playing the socialist bogeyman card, while admitting that the agenda is actually popular, because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be so "hard to get rid of" as he and Bartiromo are carping about.
BARRASSO: Well, that's actually the absolute bottom line of what we are looking at here, and in a way to try to lower the price tag, they're saying, well, we'll just start them small and let them grow over time. You and I know Maria, once you get federal government program in place, it's very hard for it to ever go away. So everything that you mentioned is in there, the question is how much are they going to start finding?
But their goal is a complete takeover of the lives of the American people, which is why I call it big government socialism and it is an expansion of government and an addiction to government like we have never even contemplated or seen before.
And Joe Biden has surrendered to this socialist wing of the party, even to the point of holding hostage bridges, ports, airports, highways—things that the American people actually want.
I've seen quite a few surveys on support for what's in Biden's plan, and this polling data from Data For Progress is pretty typical. There's majority support for the bill overall:
And there's support for the individual provisions that Bartiromo and Barrasso were lying about:
Voters Back All Provisions of the Build Back Better Plan
We then tested support for the individual provisions of the Build Back Better plan. We find majority support for all provisions. Investments in long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities are backed with a margin of +67 points. Modernizing K-12 school buildings, modernizing the electricity grid, and allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices are all supported by margins of at least +55 points. Creating a Civilian Climate Corps, lowering the Medicare age, universal pre-K, and tuition-free community college are all supported by margins of at least +25 points. A pathway to citizenship is backed by a margin of +22 points. Expanding child tax benefits is supported by a +9-point margin.
Which is why, I assume, you never see any polling on the bill on Fox. Just lying and fear-mongering, like we saw here. Republicans have been playing this same game since the days of Reagan, when they were calling Social Security and Medicare "socialism."
