Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Amtrak station in Mobile, Alabama on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. Photo: Gregg Pachkowski / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has apparently had enough of Republican members of Congress who voted against the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law claiming credit for the funding the bill provides their constituents. He only needed one short word to respond to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) claiming credit – with less than two weeks left before Election Day – for a highway project in her district that’s funded by the bill she voted against.
“We hate traffic just as much as you do,” Mace wrote on X. “We helped secure $195 million—the largest grant in South Carolina’s history from the U.S. Department of Transportation—to kick off the Long Point Road Interchange Project!”
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“Um,” Buttigieg wrote in response, which drew attention to a community note that pointed out that Mace voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law that funded that project. It included a link to her explaining in 2021 that the law is “anything but” an infrastructure law, falsely claiming that “less than 10%” of the law’s funding “goes to true infrastructure,” and demanding that Republicans should oppose it as “good stewards of your dollars.”
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Buttigieg was one of the most visible Biden administration advocates of the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, which passed in November 2021 and contained $1.2 trillion in funding for infrastructure projects related to transportation, broadband access, clean water, and electric grid renewal.
Many House Republicans vehemently opposed the bill and then, once it passed, asked the Department of Transportation to fund projects in their district with grants authorized by the law.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), for example, called the bill a “Solyndra style slush fund” (referring to an Obama-era program that rightwingers attacked), decried it as “wasteful” and “garbage,” and accused the bill of supporting “government welfare.” She called for holding “fake Republicans” who voted for the bill “accountable.” She called Buttigieg a “diversity hire” repeatedly and made gay jokes about Buttigieg taking “maternity leave” to “figure out how to chest feed” his children.”
Buttigieg and the Biden administration made it clear that they wouldn’t refuse grant requests just because they came from the districts of members of Congress who voted against the bill.
“It’s hard not to chuckle,” Buttigieg said in a 2022 interview when asked about receiving the letters from Republicans who fervently denounced the spending bill. “Obviously, it’s good for their districts, which is why it’s probably good for America.”
“We’re not going to be trying to be jerks about it,” he continued. “We’re also not going to be shy about folks knowing who was with us and who was against us.”
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