J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
- After she voted against Biden's infrastructure bill, AOC criticized him for celebrating it.
- She said the reconciliation bill also needs to be passed to deliver critical benefits to Americans.
- Biden calls it a "gamechanger in half a dozen ways" but AOC says "messaging it as a solution alone is going to get us into trouble."
After months of negotiations, the House passed President Joe Biden's bipartisan infrastructure framework (BIF) on Friday, and although his social-spending package is still pending in Congress, the president was quick to tout his infrastructure achievement.
But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – one of the six House Democrats who voted against the infrastructure bill – said it's not something to celebrate on its own, and that Biden shouldn't be.
"We can and should message BIF as a step, but messaging it as a solution alone is going to get us into trouble," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. "BBB [Build Back Better] contains the majority of the president[']s agenda. We must keep going and ensure the promises are delivered."
Ocasio-Cortez emphasized that without Democrats' reconciliation bill, the benefits of the infrastructure bill won't come to fruition, and she particularly called out Biden's claim that the infrastructure bill will allow the US to get rid of dangerous lead pipes, saying the majority of that funding would actually come from Build Back Better, which hasn't passed yet.
-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 7, 2021
In remarks after its passage, Biden called the bill "a gamechanger in a half a dozen ways."
As Insider reported, the $550 billion infrastructure bill contains funding for roads, bridges and electric vehicles, among other things, but does not have significant investments for the climate, universal pre-K, or paid family and medical leave that Democrats are looking to pass in their reconciliation bill.
And although the infrastructure bill gained the support of 13 Republicans, and the majority of House Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez and five of her colleagues, including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of New York, remained firm in their stance they would not support the infrastructure bill unless it was passed alongside the reconciliation bill.
In a statement on Saturday, Pressley said that in rejecting the bipartisan bill, she was choosing not to "pit community member against community member."
"I refuse to choose between the livelihoods of the union workers who build our highways and bridges, and the childcare and healthcare workers who care for our children, elderly, and disabled loved ones. I refuse to choose between our crumbling roads, bridges public transit system, and our crumbling housing stock," she said.
The progressive lawmakers have also been critical of the extent to which their social-spending bill has been cut down. What started as a $3.5 trillion proposal is now a $1.75 trillion plan, thanks to opposition from centrist holdouts Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and Ocasio-Cortez has made her thoughts clear on the progressive priorities, like free community college, being cut from the plan.
On her Instagram story last week, she said there are are "so many people making decisions who literally have to imagine what normal life is like ... because they've never had to choose between paying for rent and medicine or papers etc."
The infrastructure bill is headed to Biden's desk for a signature, and Democrats are hoping to get reconciliation passed before Thanksgiving.