Congressional Republicans are walking a tightrope between promoting pieces of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic relief package that are popular with their voters — while also bashing the overall law as a costly boondoggle.
And although these lawmakers say there’s nothing hypocritical about voting against a bill while backing some provisions in it, Democrats are quick to accuse them of wanting to have it both ways.
“Happy to announce that NC-11 was awarded grants from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services,” Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., tweeted Tuesday, pointing to millions of dollars that went to health care providers in his home district. “Proud to see tax-payer dollars returned to NC-11.”
This comes as the law, which did not receive any Republican votes in the House or Senate, has the support of about a quarter of self-identified Republicans, and enjoys more than 2-to-1 approval by Americans overall, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll.
Cawthorn, a 25-year-old who counts himself among the party’s more Trumpian wing, voted against the American Rescue Plan, which provided the funding he promoted.
“Come’on man,” tweeted Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison. “@RepCawthorn is trying to take credit for the grants HE VOTED AGAINST. Republicans have no shame.”
Micah Bock, a spokesperson for Cawthorn, explained his posts by saying the congressman “firmly believes that the American Rescue Plan does more harm than good” and that Cawthorn “uses his official Twitter account to post information relevant to his constituents in NC-11.”
“Oftentimes this means providing relevant federal information on proposals that the congressman does not support,” Bock said in a statement to NBC News. “There are portions of the American Rescue Plan that benefit NC-11, however, bills are not passed in portions, they are passed entirely or not at all, and this bill does significantly more harm than good.”
Cawthorn’s posts followed other similar tweets and statements from other elected Republicans, such as Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who garnered attention weeks ago when he praised the portion of the stimulus package that provided billions to restaurateurs.
“Independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief,” he tweeted. “This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic by helping to adapt their operations and keep their employees on the payroll.”
Speaking to reporters later, Wicker said his praise after voting against the package was not an inconsistent position. That funding was the result of an amendment to the legislation that he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., proposed.
“One good provision in a $1.9 trillion bill doesn’t mean I have to vote for the whole thing,” he said.
Another Republican with complicated views of the law is Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who issued a lengthy statement explaining why she did not vote for the bill while touting a number of measures that would benefit her home state.
“While I agreed with many of the ways in which it directed funding, I viewed a number of the priorities included as unnecessary and not related to COVID relief,” she said earlier this month. “With a bill that was predetermined to pass, I went to work to improve the package to ensure that Alaskans would receive a fair share of the relief funds.”
Christopher Nicholas, a veteran Republican consultant based in Harrisburg, Pa., said it’s too soon to know how the $1.9 trillion aid package will fare with voters in next year’s midterms, but he predicated that it would become less popular over time if GOP candidates focus on more controversial provisions.
“In a Republican primary it can only be an advantage to be strongly against that,” Nicholas said, arguing that conservatives can support parts of it while believing it was too large. “It shouldn’t have been a $1.9 trillion bill; it should have been one quarter of that, at most.”
In the run-up to the American Rescue Plan’s passage, many Republicans notably spoke less about its steep price tag and instead attacked the $1.9 trillion legislation as a “liberal wish list.” A February Economist/YouGov poll showed the bill was supported by nearly four in 10 Republicans and 30 percent of Trump voters. But partisan polarization in Congress has taken a toll — those numbers have dropped to 27 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in a new YouGov poll last week.
Yet passage of the bill has correlated with an increase in Biden’s approval on his handling of the pandemic. A poll released Wednesday by The Associated Press showed Biden with a 73 percent approval on his Covid-19 efforts and 60 percent on the economy — up since he enacted the $1.9 trillion law. And a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 72 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s response to the coronavirus — four points higher than early March, before he enacted the Covid-19 law. The poll found that 60 percent approve of his handling of the economic recovery.
Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, said Biden’s approval ratings on his handling of the virus and the economy represent an unusual breakthrough in a polarized political environment.
“With Biden and Covid, you don’t see a partisan triggering the way you typically see around almost anything that’s happened in our politics over the last decade,” Belcher said. “It’s really quite remarkable.”
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders have been taunting Republicans with headlines from local news outlets in their districts outlining stimulus dollars headed to their communities.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Wednesday put out one such release, pointing to a headline in The Bakersfield Californian — a major news outlet in House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s district — that mentioned the hundreds of millions Kern County, California was set to receive.
“Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy bet his house on House Republicans’ unanimous opposition to an overwhelmingly popular, bipartisan rescue plan to put vaccines in arms, money in pockets, children back in school safely, and people back in jobs,” the statement read. “And his members have been hearing about it back home. Now he can tell them he feels their pain.”