The Senate had before it a 2,700-page bill that purports to allocate $1.2 trillion in taxpayer funds to repair America's infrastructure.  Of course, that's not the case.  While a good chunk will repair roads and bridges, vast sums of the money will be used for a variety of leftist wish list items, including large chunks of the New Green Deal.  A bill that bad ought to be laughed out of the Senate.  Instead, not only did all the Democrats vote for it, but so did 19 alleged Republicans.

It's a dead certainty that none of the Democrats and Vichy Republicans read the bill.  Just as with Obamacare, they were going to pass it to see what was in it.  Still, we know some of what's in the bill, and it's not good.  Here are a few examples.

The bill begins the process of installing devices in all new cars, turning each car into a breathalyzer.  I happen to hate drunk drivers as much as the next person, but to have that level of government in one's car is disturbing.

The bill implements a test system that allows the government to track every mile you drive in real-time.  Then you'll be taxed on miles. This is a regressive tax because it will fall harder on lower-income people than on rich people.

The bill will see taxpayers pay massive subsidies for electric vehicles.  Every leftist loves electric vehicles.  The problem with them is that there's nothing clean or green about them.  The batteries are made using filthy, abusive mining processes in Africa and, especially, in China.  In other words, China will control an essential component of American cars.  When the batteries die, they can't be recycled; they just rot.  Also, our electrical grid isn't big enough to sustain the cars the greenies imagine — and the grid still isn't hardened.  The bill claims that it will expand the grid and harden it but, you know, I kind of doubt that.

Then there's the fact that all those electrical cars do is displace pollution.  You still need energy to drive them; the energy's polluting byproduct just doesn't emanate from the vehicle.

And lastly, there's the fact that, even with super-fast charging, it takes upwards of 30 minutes to "fill up" that electrical tank.  If you thought lines at gas stations were bad during fuel shortages, just wait until people are trying to tank up their electric cars to drive home from work.  The bill provides for more electric charging stations, but at 30 minutes to an hour per refill, nothing will ever be enough.

Huge sums of money are being poured into public transportation, even though very few Americans rely on it — and, outside densely populated cities, it's simply not a reasonable means of transportation for Americans.  One only has to drive across America (something leftists seldom do) to realize that public transportation has no place in America's huge spaces.

Climate activism is a major part of the bill because it forces states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions — and to prepare plans that the federal government must approve.  This is costly and deleterious to citizens, and it only makes happy people who believe in the myth of anthropogenic climate change.

Proving that nobody learned anything from Obama's shovel-ready jobs plan, which was simply a corporate boondoggle for friends of the Democrat party, there's a whole heck of a lot of boondoggle in this bill — including handing a billion or so to the commission that Joe Manchin's wife runs.  If Joe Manchin were standing on a street corner under a light, wearing an off-the-shoulder dress and giving come-ons to sailors, we'd know exactly what to call him.

The bill also slips in a mandate against discriminating based on "gender identity" in connection with broadband improvement.  You just know there's going to be mission creep.  One day, when the bearded man in a dress shows up as the nanny the agency sent over to care for your five-year-old girl, you'd better say yes or prepare to be charged with gender identity bias.

And just to make it all worse, the bill lies about funding.  The Daily Signal explains the funny money magic behind the bill's huge imposition on our already overburdened federal debt.  There is no money to pay for all this — unless the government prints more money, creating even faster-growing inflation.

Naturally, all of the Democrats voted for this monstrosity.  But so did 19 Republicans.  I call them Vichy Republicans because they remind me of those Frenchmen who, during WWII, were happy to collaborate with the Nazis.  I'm not calling the Republicans or Democrats Nazis; I'm just calling the Republicans collaborators who willingly abandon their people to make their own lives comfortable.  I could as easily call them Quislings, after the Norwegians who collaborated with the Nazis.

Here's are the 19 Vichy Republicans, every one of whom should be primaried:

• Roy Blunt, Missouri
• Richard Burr, North Carolina
• Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia
• Bill Cassidy, Louisiana
• Susan Collins, Maine
• Kevin Cramer, North Dakota
• Mike Crapo, Idaho
• Deb Fischer, Nebraska
• Lindsey Graham, South Carolina
• Chuck Grassley, Iowa
• John Hoeven, North Dakota
• Mitch McConnell, Kentucky
• Lisa Murkowski, Alaska
• Rob Portman, Ohio
• James Risch, Idaho
• Mitt Romney, Utah
• Dan Sullivan, Alaska
• Thom Tillis, North Carolina
• Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Image: The Vichy Republicans by Andrea Widburg.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.