Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) gave credit to Republicans in the House for passing the infrastructure bill, saying that the measure did not have enough votes to pass with only Democrat supporters.
“The 13 Republicans who voted yes on that bill in the House, and many of whom are now receiving death threats, they deserve a much greater share of thanks than they received,” Sinema said according to Politico. “Speaker Pelosi did not have the Democratic votes to pass that bill on a one party vote.”
Nineteen Republicans also voted for the measure when the legislation was up in the Senate last summer.
Sinema also gave a lot of credit to the Congressional Black Caucus for pushing for the bill, saying they “did a lot of heavy lifting to get that bill across the finish line in the House.”
Elsewhere in the profile, she criticized politicians who promised things that they could not achieve to curry political favor.
“You’re either honest or you’re not honest. So just tell the truth and be honest and deliver that which you can deliver,” Sinema said. “There’s this growing trend of people in both political parties who promise things that cannot be delivered, in order to get the short-term political gain.”
On Monday, President Joe Biden signed his championed $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act after months of negotiations and setbacks.
According to reports, the bill allocates about $550 million toward various projects like transportation and broadband. Biden billed the legislation as “historic” and as something which would help the American middle class.
“Most of all it does something truly historic,” Biden said at the signing ceremony earlier this week. “I ran for President believing it was time to rebuild the backbone of this nation which I characterize as working people in the middle class. They are the ones who built the country.”
Not all Republicans were happy with the passage of the bill, and some accused those Republicans who did vote for it who voted of bailing out the Biden administration.
“And I will tell you, in the House, for the House Republicans who voted for this, Joe Biden and the Democrats, their agenda was on the rails. It was failing. It was on the way to going down,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said on Sunday. “And what those Republicans did is they breathed life into it; they gave Joe Biden a political win. He’ll now go across the country touting, look at this big bipartisan win.”
Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) was especially critical of his colleagues in the House who voted for the bill.
“A Republican majority isn’t enough — just days ago, thirteen Republicans voted with Democrats to advance Biden’s agenda — we need a majority who will fight for America’s agenda with the courage to speak the truth and to take on the 21st-Century tyrants of Big Tech and Big Pharma, and—yes—the go-along, get-along establishment in our own party,” Roy says in a new campaign ad, according to The Daily Caller.