Senator Ted Cruz has accused President Joe Biden of using the 2021 infrastructure bill to boost his re-election bid and is calling for an investigation into signs crediting the law for infrastructure projects across the country.
According to Politico, Cruz takes issue with signs that read “Project funded by President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill,” saying the administration has “highly politicized” the $1 trillion bill that the president signed in 2021.
“I am writing to refer this to you for investigation as a possible violation of the Hatch Act, a federal law that broadly prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for campaign activities,” the Texas Republican wrote in a letter to the chief on Thursday of the Office of Special Counsel. , according to Politico. “Congress, not President Biden, wrote [the infrastructure law]and it did not do so to support the president’s re-election campaign.”
A White House spokesperson told Politico in response “that the signs ‘promote transparency and inform taxpayers about how federal dollars are being spent.’” She added: “If Senator Cruz were half as concerned about the fact that children in Texas get safe drinking water if he had about signs he might have voted for the Infrastructure Act.”
Despite voting against the bill, Cruz last year praised a project in Texas funded by the legislation as a “major bipartisan victory.”
The senator’s complaint about the signals comes as Biden struggles to convince voters of his political victories in an election year. The infrastructure bill, touted as one of Biden’s most significant legislative achievements, passed Congress with bipartisan support despite significant opposition from the Republican Party. Seasoned MAGA lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called her fellow Republicans who supported the bill “traitors” and posted their office phone numbers online. Several of them said they had received death threats.
Cruz said in his letter that the signs linking Biden to the infrastructure bill are “nothing more than campaign site signs courtesy of the American taxpayer.” He also said the “INVESTING IN AMERICA” logo on those signs was “intentionally designed to resemble the Biden-Harris campaign logo,” Politico reported.
Past presidents have been criticized for attaching their names to specific initiatives. During the height of the Covid pandemic, the Internal Revenue Service printed then-President Donald Trump’s name on the stimulus checks sent to millions of Americans. In 2001, letters were sent to taxpayers informing them of a tax cut passed under President George Bush.
The senator himself recently faced legal and ethical investigations into his podcast’s financial ties to a political action committee supporting his own re-election campaign. In April, End Citizens United filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission calling for an investigation into whether Cruz’s podcast, “Verdict With Ted Cruz,” improperly directed his radio distribution company iHeartMedia to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to a pro-Cruz PAC to send. . Cruz’s campaign has said the senator is not being paid by iHeartMedia, and in response to reporting, it told The Washington Post: “How convenient that the mainstream media and the cogs in the Biden-Pelosi Democratic Party machine want this stops. ”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
