***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
Last week Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D) was mocked on social media for declaring that social programs like “paid leave,” “child care,” and “caregiving” were “infrastructure” because they were part of President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure slush fund. And, during Sunday’s morning newscasts, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Sunday Today took up the Orwellian redefinition of infrastructure to bash Republicans for not going along with what any sane person would describe as social programs.
On NBC, White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell tacitly admitted they were trying to rebrand what infrastructure meant by telling viewers that roads and bridges were part of the bill’s “traditional infrastructure” spending:
The President is proposing $620 billion for traditional infrastructure including modernizing 20,000 miles of roadways; another $650 billion for broadband, the electric grid, and clean water; and another 400 billion for the White House calls the care economy, putting money toward elder care, childcare, and so on.
O’Donnell went on to suggest that the Republicans were the ones trying to falsely label that $400 billion as “social programs.” “Now, Republicans say they are willing to work on the more traditional types of infrastructure spending, but oppose much of the spending they see as new social programs,” she huffed.
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