Cruz defends jobs record as Allred slams vote against CHIPS Act

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports while U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz insists he will keep fighting for jobs and economic growth in Texas if reelected in November, Democratic rival Colin Allred keeps hammering him over one key vote that he says proves otherwise. In 2022, Cruz voted against fellow Texas Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s microchip manufacturing legislation that is set to inject more than $60 billion in funding into Texas to build new plants and potentially make the state home to a national research center for semiconductors. “We have a Senator in Ted Cruz who opposed that,” Allred, a Dallas congressman, said last week during a campaign stop in Austin. “He thinks it is more important to play politics than to do what is good for our state.”

During a campaign stop in San Antonio on Tuesday touting his job creation record, Cruz acknowledged he voted against the bill but explained it was because it was structured to give billions of dollars in incentives to giant corporations to build in Texas — something he philosophically believes is bad politics. In April, Samsung received $6.4 billion from the program to build an advanced manufacturing center in Taylor just outside of Austin that is expected to create 17,000 construction jobs and 4,500 manufacturing jobs. Cruz didn’t criticize that project or other recent awards in North Texas directly, but said generally subsidy programs are dangerous. He pointed to 2009, when President Barack Obama’s administration awarded a $535 million loan guarantee to a California-based solar panel construction company that went bankrupt just three years later.