Following President Donald Trump’s veto of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) “Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act” bill at the end of December and the subsequent failed vote in the House of Representatives to overturn his decision on Jan. 8, the congresswoman representing Colorado’s fourth congressional district has made it clear that this won’t be the end of her fight for the legislation.
“I said yesterday in an interview that President Trump has always said ‘promises made, promises kept,’ and I completely agree with that mentality,” said Boebert during a Jan. 9 appearance on KNUS radio’s Jeff and Bill Show, a conservative talk radio program. “I am going to ensure President Trump keeps his promise to continue this Arkansas Valley water infrastructure project and that he does not go back on his word on this.”
Trump’s first administration invested $28 million in the project in 2020, and construction of the 130-mile pipeline between Pueblo and Lamar began in 2023. If completed, it aims to bring reliable, clean drinking water from Pueblo Reservoir to more than 50,000 residents living east of the city.
Boebert says her next strategy for getting the bill over the finish line will involve shoehorning the policy into a future omnibus bill or continuing resolution, although she did not offer any indication of when that might happen.
“When I was able to get my ‘Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit’ bill passed, I did it the right way; this was a single-subject bill. I didn’t jam it into another bill, but guess what? I’m gonna have to do that now,” Boebert said during the radio appearance. “Now I’m going to have to find a way to be swampy and jam this into a must-pass piece of legislation because that is how this town works. That is how dirty things get.”
Boebert noted in the interview that when funding for the Arkansas Valley Conduit had been included in Biden’s 2023 infrastructure bill, she had voted against it, believing that the benefits the funding would bring to her constituents were outweighed by her disagreements with other elements of the massive legislative package.
The legislation, H.R. 131, was introduced in January of last year and would have given Colorado towns additional time to repay federal loans for the construction of a pipeline. In addition to extending the repayment period from 50 to 100 years, it would also have removed interest payments.
It passed the House through a voice vote in July, before receiving unanimous support in the Senate and being sent to the Resolute Desk in mid-December.
The president, in a move that critics have speculated to be retribution for Boebert’s vote to release the Epstein files or Gov. Jared Polis’s (D-CO) lack of cooperation with the federal government regarding the pardoning of Tina Peters, vetoed the bipartisan bill because it “would continue the failed policies of the past by forcing Federal taxpayers to bear even more of the massive costs of a local water project.”
In response to Trump’s veto, Boebert criticised both his claims and the president himself, albeit while reaffirming her loyalty to him.
“I don’t think that President Trump has been the most fiscally responsible president – I absolutely respect him and support him, so happy that he is there. This is not something that is going to cost what his statement says it’s going to cost,” said Boebert during her appearance, referencing the $1.3 billion estimate included in Trump’s veto statement. “I’m not sure what staffer came up with that number, but even the Congressional Budget Office has … always said that the monetary costs on it are too insignificant to even score this bill, so that means it would be under $500,000.”
Despite having “worked very hard” to gather the votes needed to overturn the president’s veto, she claimed during the interview that many of her Republican colleagues who had previously supported the bill came back to her saying that the White House had directly pressured them to stand against it.
When asked whether she believed the veto was an act of retribution, she told the radio program’s hosts that she “asked that question very directly to some who are around the president, and it is very aggressively denied.”
Boebert did not respond to the Colorado Times Recorder’s requests for comment at the time of publication. This story will be updated with any response received.
“All this is [doing] is reducing interest payments for rural Colorado counties who have overwhelmingly supported this administration three times in a row now,” said Boebert. “There are plenty of things that the government does … so the economy can do well and people can actually live the American dream, and I would certainly hope that clean water is a part of the American dream.”
