Over the past several months, a variety of congressional Republicans have tried to take credit for infrastructure projects they voted against, hoping voters wouldn’t know the difference. Leave it to Sen. Ted Cruz, however, to provide us with a classic of the genre.
Last week, the Texas Republican published this tweet, which read, “The Ports to Plains highway will run from Laredo all the way up to North Dakota and into Canada. This project will bring jobs to Texas and millions of dollars to the state. A great bipartisan victory!”
The message appeared alongside video in which the GOP senator boasted with great enthusiasm to KAMC-TV in Lubbock about the project, the years of hard work that went into it, and how proud he was of his legislative victory:
“We did the hard work to bring together Democrats and Republicans, and we now have designated I-27, the Ports-to-Plains [highway], to run from Laredo, all the way north through Lubbock, all the way up to Canada. That is going to bring jobs, $55 billion project, you’re talking hundreds of thousands of jobs. You’re talking tens of billions of dollars of additional GDP to the state of Texas. And it’s a great bipartisan victory for the state of Texas.”
Sounds good, right? When senators deliver for their constituents, it stands to reason that they’ll brag like this to local news outlets. What Cruz neglected to mention, however, was that he voted against the bill. The Hill reported:
Cruz and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to an omnibus bill passed earlier this year that designated part of the Ports-to-Plains Corridor as a future addition to the nation’s interstate highway system. The Texas Republican supported the amendment but ultimately voted against the sweeping $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package when the Senate voted on the legislation in full.
In fact, as it turns out, in the same on-air appearance at the local ABC affiliate, Ryan Chandler specifically asked the senator why he voted against the bill he’d bragged about moments earlier. Cruz explained that while he supported his priority, the legislation included other measures, so it passed over his objections. This part of the interview was left out of Cruz’s public relations push. Imagine that. Is it any wonder that even the White House is needling the senator over the contradiction?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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