Jerry Moran cares more about GOP primary votes than Kansas’ crumbling infrastructure

With a solid bipartisan majority, the U.S. Senate approved a five-year, $1 trillion infrastructure improvement bill Tuesday.

If passed by the House, the measure will help fix roads and bridges, improve internet service in rural areas, fix our rickety electricity grid and make other important improvements for the 21st century. It’s a critical bill at a critical time.

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri voted yes, and should be applauded for that decision.

Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri voted no. That isn’t a shock: Marshall and Hawley would vote against a cure for cancer if a Democrat found it. Their hyperpartisan opposition to anything that makes America better should never be doubted.

Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas also voted no. He’s a special case. Kansans should be deeply disappointed in his vote.

Moran was part of the original group that crafted the infrastructure bill, and there were early indications he would approach the measure with an open mind.

It was a ruse. Moran is on the ballot next year, and he is always about self-preservation first. He evidently concluded GOP primary voters are just fine with spotty broadband, dangerous bridges, substandard water supplies and crumbling railroads.

He must also think voters like misleading claims and bad logic, because his statement opposing the infrastructure bill was full of both.

“I wanted this to be a smaller, more affordable, paid-for package that was not excessive in scope,” he said on the Senate floor Monday. The bill added too much to the nation’s debt, he said.

The measure is expected to spend about $1 trillion over the next five years, or roughly $200 billion each year. Of that, roughly half is new spending for new projects.

Most of it is paid for. The Congressional Budget Office says the measure would add $256 billion to the nation’s debt — over 10 years. That’s an average of $25.6 billion a year.

If that proves to be correct, it’s a meaningless rounding error compared with the whole federal deficit, which was $3.1 trillion — that’s right, trillion — last fiscal year. Adding another $25 billion to the debt, in a time of low interest rates, to repair a country crumbling to pieces, should be an easy yes.

Moran’s hand-wringing over the national debt is highly partisan and not serious. In 2017, he voted for the Donald Trump tax cuts that cost the government an estimated $2 trillion over 10 years — nearly eight times the “cost” of the infrastructure bill.

Moran voted for those deficits because, naturally, a Republican president proposed them. “I expect to support a tax package that grows the economy, protects taxpayers, creates good paying jobs and helps Americans,” he said at the time.

Memo to Sen. Moran: The infrastructure bill achieves every one of those goals, while leaving Kansas in better shape for decades to come. And it’s far cheaper than the tax cuts you supported.

The nation’s debt has grown by $22 trillion since Jerry Moran arrived in Washington. That isn’t his fault alone, of course, but it puts his debt complaints in perspective: Under Democrats and Republicans, America’s borrowing has exploded. Moran has been a part of that.

Jerry Moran is free to make up his own mind. We’re also free to remember: When a new bridge is opened in Kansas, or rural airports are improved, or electric vehicle charging stations are built, or there are new buses in KCK, or Amtrak expands its service, or kids get better internet in Colby, Moran cannot claim credit.

He voted against all those things, and more.