Sen. Ted Cruz has accused President Joe Biden of using the 2021 infrastructure law to boost his re-election bid and is calling for an investigation into signs that credit the law for infrastructure projects across the country.
According to Politico, Cruz is taking issue with signs that say “Project Funded By President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” saying the administration has “highly politicized” the $1 trillion law, which the president signed in 2021.
“I write to refer this to you for investigation as a possible violation of the Hatch Act, federal law that broadly prohibits using taxpayer dollars for campaign activity,” the Texas Republican wrote in a letter to the head of the Office of Special Counsel on Thursday, per Politico. “Congress, not President Biden, wrote [the infrastructure law], and it did not do so to aid the President’s reelection campaign.”
A White House spokesperson told Politico in response “that the signs ‘promote transparency and inform taxpayers how federal dollars are being spent.’” She added, “If Senator Cruz were half as concerned about Texas kids getting safe drinking water as he is about signs, he might have voted for the Infrastructure Law.”
Despite Cruz’s vote against the bill, last year he hailed a project in Texas funded by the legislation as a “great bipartisan victory.”
The senator’s complaint about the signs comes as Biden is struggling to convince voters of his political wins in an election year. The infrastructure law, touted as one of Biden’s major legislative achievements, passed Congress with bipartisan support despite considerable GOP opposition. Hardcore 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 received death threats.
Cruz said in his letter that the signs linking Biden to the infrastructure law are “nothing more than campaign yard signs courtesy of the American taxpayer.” He also said the “INVESTING IN AMERICA” logo on those signs was “purposefully designed to look like 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 to inform them of a tax cut passed under President George Bush.
The senator himself has recently drawn legal and ethical scrutiny over his podcast’s financial links to a political action committee that’s 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 its radio distribution company iHeartMedia to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to a pro-Cruz PAC. Cruz’s campaign has said that the senator is not paid by iHeartMedia, and in response to reporting, it told The Washington Post, “How convenient that the mainstream media and the cogs in the machine of the Biden-Pelosi Democrat Party want this to stop.”