Eighteen Senate Republicans sold out to Senate Democrats, with 17 of them voting Wednesday night to advance a $1.2 trillion Democrat “infrastructure” bill and another signaling he would.

The Senate voted to invoke cloture, or advance, H.R. 3684, the legislative vehicle for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. The vote featured Republican and Democrat support for the bill. The Senate voted 67-32 to invoke cloture on the bill, with seventeen Republicans in favor of invoking cloture on the bill.

All of them voted for this procedural vote without reading the bill—because it would have been impossible for them to read a bill that does not yet exist. The bill has still not been written despite months of negotiations.

The Senate Republicans who voted for the Democrat $1.2 trillion bill include:

1. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
2. Richard Burr (R-NC)
3. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
4. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
5. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
6. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
7. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
8. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
9. Rob Portman (R-OH)
10. Jim Risch (R-ID)
11. Mitt Romney (R-UT)
12. Thom Tillis (R-NC)
13. Todd Young (R-IN)
14. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
15. John Hoeven (R-ND)
16. Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
17. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) was absent but signaled that he would have voted yes to advance the legislation.

These Senate Republicans voted to advance the bill even though lawmakers have not yet drafted a physical bill.

President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure package is set to be a boon for the wife of Sen. Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat and key swing vote for the White House’s agenda.

Mr. Biden’s legislation, as written, greatly expands funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). The federal agency, which is responsible for promoting economic development in the 13 states that make up Appalachia, is led by Mr. Manchin’s wife, Gayle.

According to language included within the infrastructure bill, which was released Sunday night, the ARC is set to receive an additional billion dollars over the next four years. The new funding is set to increase the agency’s federal budget by more than 50% annually.

President Joe Biden’s “infrastructure” plan is called the American Jobs Plan, but it doesn’t focus much on infrastructure and wouldn’t create many jobs. A more appropriate name for the $2.2 trillion proposal would be the “American Debt Plan.”

Former President Barack Obama’s “stimulus” bill, which Congress passed in 2009 with Biden as vice president, cost taxpayers a cool $278,000 for every new job added or saved, based on estimates from Obama’s hand-picked economists. Biden’s “infrastructure” plan might have trouble matching even that pathetic record. The plan’s overarching philosophy appears to be that the private sector doesn’t create jobs but government creates jobs.

Moody’s Analytics projects that Biden’s “infrastructure” plan would result in there being 2.7 million additional nonfarm jobs by 2030 at a total cost of $2,183,800,000,000. That works out to $809,000 per job — nearly three times as much as those under Obama’s failed “stimulus” bill. Yet Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that creating fewer than 3 million jobs at the cost of more than $2 trillion “is a great place to be.”

Perhaps Buttigieg is comparing this anemic rate of return to that of Biden’s recently passed “COVID-19 stimulus” bill, which Moody’s projects will result in about 700,000 additional jobs by 2030 at a cost, per the Congressional Budget Office, of $1.8 trillion. That’s a little over $2.5 million per job. Still, compared to anything but Biden’s wasteful COVID-19 stimulus bill, his infrastructure plan would be an appallingly inefficient job-creation program.

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