Lauren Boebert defends taking credit for money in spending bill despite voting against it

Republican Representative Lauren Boebert defended bragging about bringing home $20m for water and infrastructure projects to her Colorado district in the recent spending bill that passed – despite having voted against the bill’s final passage.

The right-wing Republican put out a press release last week touting the funding for projects in her state’s 3rd district.

“These include important federal resources for new water storage, improving water quality, funding water treatment plants, building new water supply lines, reducing congestion on I-70, and building roads and bridges,” Ms Boebert said in a press release.

“I'm grateful to all the local stakeholders who brought these important projects to my attention and that worked with my team and I throughout this process to ensure that 10 out of 10 of our requests were successfully funded in public law. Can't wait for the ribbon cuttings and to see these priorities come to fruition.”

But Ms Boebert voted against the spending bill on 8 March. The legislation was the first of six spending bills that passed this month to fund the government through the end of the current fiscal year, which expires on 30 September. Last week, the House and Senate passed the second round of spending bills to keep the government open.

Ms Boebert bragged about bringing the money back to Colorado last week to The Independent.

“Sure did, I fought to get it in there, did I not,” she said. “If I wasn’t working on it, then it wouldn’t have been in there.”

But when asked about why she voted against its final passage, she said she disliked the process.

“I didn't agree to the swampy way it came to the floor but I fought to get the stuff in the bills and it's there,” she said. “And Colorado is going to benefit from it.”

Ms Boebert has come under fire almost as soon as she entered Congress. In her first term, she closely aligned herself with former president Donald Trump and during the January 6 riot, tweeted that then-speaker Nancy Pelosi was being removed from the chamber. She also implied that Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the first two female Muslim members elected to Congress, was a terrorist.

The numerous controversies led to her narrowly winning her re-election in 2022 to Democrat Adam Frisch by 546 votes. Since her second term began, she continued to be a lightning rod, voting against making Kevin McCarthy being speaker in the early days of the 118th Congress. She received additional attention when she and a date were thrown out of a theater for vaping during a musical performance of Beetlejuice and security footage revealed that she behaved inappropriately with her date.

Facing a tough re-election, Ms Boebert announced earlier this year that she would run in Colorado’s 4th district after Representative Ken Buck would not seek re-election. Mr Buck resigned from Congress last week, which triggered a special election for his seat.