Biden pokes at Tuberville for praising major broadband funding he voted AGAINST

GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville insists he did not praise the bipartisan infrastructure bill he voted against after President Biden appeared to be enjoying his celebration of the initiative he voted against, which will raise $1.4 billion to expand Internet access in Alabama. expand.

“Broadband is essential to the success of our rural communities and our entire economy,” Tuberville wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Great to see Alabama receiving critical funding to help drive ongoing broadband efforts.”

Twitter added a community note to the tweet that read, “Senator Tuberville voted against the bill providing this funding.”

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) had just released funding allocations for each state’s broadband projects.

During a speech on “Bidenomics” in Chicago, the president yelled at the Alabama Republican.

“There’s a man named Tuberville, Senator from Alabama, who went out and said he was vehemently against the legislation. Now he greets the passage.’

“Halting his passage” isn’t even close to accurate,” Tuberville communications director Steven Stafford told DailyMail.com in reference to the president’s speech. ‘Furthermore, broadband was less than 4% of the 2,000 page bill.

Broadband financing accounted for $65 billion of the $1.2 trillion bill.

When asked why the senator praised initiatives that were part of a bill he voted against, Stafford said, “Coach voted against the infrastructure bill because it wasted Alabam residents’ tax dollars. It spent too much to get too little in return for Alabama.

“But now that it’s the law of the land, the people of Alabama deserve their fair share. Coach is proud to advocate for this funding to go to Alabama.”

In August 2021, 19 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the INVEST in America Act – the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Tuberville was not one of them.

The senator said at the time that he voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill because it is “full of big city giveaways and pet projects that have little to do with real infrastructure.”

Biden quoted Tuberville, writing, “To the groundbreaking.”

“The groundbreaking move for Space Command in Huntsville?” Tuberville joked.

Auburn’s former football coach and other Alabama legislators have argued that Huntsville, not Colorado Springs, Colo., is the best location for the new US Space Force headquarters.

Tuberville has long advocated for rural broadband access and is the top Republican on the Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Rural Development and Energy.

The Air Force and Space Force initially recommended Colorado Springs as their headquarters, but in the final days of his administration, Donald Trump ordered the headquarters to be located in Huntsville.

Critics argued that Trump moved headquarters from Colorado because voters there did not support him in 2020 – proponents have noted that Huntsville is already home to many aerospace companies.

In May, reports emerged that Biden wanted to keep its Colorado headquarters because of Alabama’s restrictive abortion laws. Publicly, the White House said it wanted to keep headquarters there because there is already a Space Force base there.

Tuberville and Biden are already embroiled in a political skirmish over the Pentagon’s policy of paying for the travel of military personnel stationed in states where abortion is illegal who must travel to another state where they can get the procedure.

Tuberville has halted promotions within DoD that he says he will not lift until the Pentagon repeals the policy or Congress overturns it.

Biden was asked about the hold before boarding Marine One to travel to Chicago on Wednesday.

“He’s not giving in to it,” Biden told reporters. “It’s totally inappropriate. It’s outrageous.’