As he campaigned for the Senate two years ago, JD Vance harshly criticized a bipartisan 2021 law to invest more than $1 trillion in America’s crumbling infrastructure, calling it a “huge mistake” shaped by Democrats who want to spend big taxpayer dollars on “really crazy stuff.”
That hasn’t stopped the first-term Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee from seeking more than $200 million in federal money made available through the law for projects across his state, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press.
Vance is hardly alone among Republicans who have condemned spending enacted under Democratic President Joe Biden, only to later reap the benefit when government funds flow to popular projects back home. In this case, he also was criticizing the achievement of one of the bill’s authors — former Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican he succeeded.
Is this even news? Surely the list of politicians who’ve opposed this or that spending measure, then gone on to demand disbursements from the same pool of money, is very long and bipartisan. I’d go so far as to say it’s his job and responsibility to get as much for his constituents as he can, no matter what his official or personal position on the bill.
For Democrats, the usual culprit is military spending – they’ll speak against it on the floor, then demand contracts and base expansion in their own state.
And when politicians do refuse disbursements on principle, as some Republican-led state legislatures did around welfare expansion and COVID-related spending, we ridicule them.