April 27, 2023 02:30 PM UTC

Once Again, Lauren Boebert: You Voted AGAINST That

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• by: Colorado Pols

Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-ifle) is known for a few things, none of which relate to her actual title as a Member of Congress.

As we saw from the latest polling via the The Rocky Mountaineer, voters in Boebert’s Congressional district (CO-03) primarily know her for one of two things: 1) Defending Donald Trump, and 2) Promoting herself on social media. “Being a Congressperson who actually does the job” is not a trait that people generally associate with Boebert.

Boebert may not do anything useful in Congress, but she would sure like you to think otherwise. In fact, Boebert should really be known for a third reson: 3) Taking credit for things she actually opposed.

This has been a common occurrence for Boebert. It begins when Boebert votes against a thing in Congress, which she does mostly so that she can stick her tongue out on Twitter as proof that she is the most conservative conservative who ever conservatived. Said “thing” often ends up passing anyway (particularly when Democrats were in the majority). Later, when the “thing” is implemented and turns out to be pretty helpful to local communities in Colorado and CO-03, Boebert jumps up and down and says, “Your welcome” (in the picture in our mind, she does not use the correct punctuation).

It happened again recently, as Anna Lynn Winfrey reports for The Pueblo Chieftain:

Boebert’s office recently issued a press release to celebrate a $5.1 million grant for Pueblo Community Health Center, but Boebert voted against the bill funding it because of what the release called “Democrat poison pills” in the legislation.

Most congressional Republicans voted no on the 2023 appropriations act. The grant was secured during the appropriations process in a bill approved by Congress in December 2022.

In an interview with the Chieftain, Boebert said the final bill was over a thousand pages and included “amendments that were not germane.”

“There was a lot of things in those pieces of legislation that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for,” Boebert said. “One of them had a $200 million earmark for the Presidio (park) in San Francisco, there was salmon recovery, there was a butterfly recovery — just all of this nonsense stuff, when we have to get our country back on track. It was just a lot of wasteful spending.”

Now, it’s completely fine for Boebert to oppose legislation because she doesn’t like something (or anything) included in the text. That’s what Boebert did when she voted ‘NO’ on the 2023 Appropriations bill (HR 2617) on Dec. 23, 2022.

But if Boebert is going to do that, then she can’t also do this:

In an email to constituents, Boebert writes, “I helped secure a $5,109,735.00 grant for Pueblo Community Health Center.”

By voting against the bill that funded the grant???

The Pueblo Community Health Center will use the $5.1 million grant to help provide health care services for anyone in need, regardless of an ability to pay. In responding to the Chieftain, the CEO of the Center, Donald Moore, was considerably more statesmanlike than his own Member of Congress:

Moore said PCHC was not directly contacted by Boebert’s staff about the appropriation request but that the center is appreciative of the grant. [Pols emphasis]

“We are grateful for whatever steps Rep. Boebert took directly or indirectly to secure (the funding),” Moore wrote to the Chieftain. “We need as many members of Congress as possible to be proud of their advocacy for community health center funding.”

The TL;DR version of Moore’s comment is basically: If Boebert did something helpful, that’s cool. 

Boebert knows that the best chance she has of winning re-election in 2024 is to spend her time doing useful things for her constituents rather than Tweeting inane nonsense. But Boebert really likes inane nonsense. Also, Tweeting is fun and easy, and doing actual work requires, well…actual work.

So, instead, Boebert is just going to skip the policy and the voting stuff and jump ahead to the “taking credit for this nice thing” stage of the legislative process. Whether she had anything to do with it or not.

This makes Boebert look like a YUGE hypocrite, but let’s be honest: She doesn’t care about any of that. Boebert just hopes that the number of voters who think she is a hypocrite is smaller than the number of voters who thinks she did a helpful thing.