As Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress spent the last two weeks engaged in fraught negotiations and partisan bickering over an interim emergency relief bill to address the ballooning coronavirus crisis, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emerged as the loudest progressive critic of the legislation in Congress. While recognizing that Democrats managed to secure some wins in the nearly $500 billion legislation—which includes funding for hospitals, small businesses, and testing—Ocasio-Cortez has essentially dismissed it as a Band-Aid for a gunshot wound.

“We are abdicating our responsibility. We haven’t legislated for a month and thousands of people are dying…. Every time we pass one of these bills, we are hearing that the real solution is coming in the next bill and the next bill and the next bill,” the freshman congresswoman said in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday night, hours after the bill passed the Senate. “At some point, we have to raise our hands and say, ‘When is the solution coming?’ Because two months of rent are going to pass by before we are actually entertaining a real bill.”

As the death toll rises in Ocasio-Cortez’s district, which spans portions of Queens and the Bronx that have been ravaged by COVID-19 with tens of thousands of cases her vocal opposition to a provisional piece of legislation is certainly warranted. But it is also reflective of the tactics that enabled her election victory and current national profile: Public persuasion is more important than any individual vote. With a couple of exceptions, most progressives in Congress are taking a pragmatic approach to this bill, holding their fire and staying in line, reflecting the degree to which COVID-19 has complicated Democratic politics.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are claiming the agreement as a victory. “Democrats flipped this emergency package from an insufficient Republican plan that left behind hospitals and health and frontline workers and did nothing to aid the survival of the most vulnerable small businesses on Main Street,” the duo wrote in a joint statement on Tuesday night. With $380 billion for small businesses—including underbanked businesses, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for disease testing, the legislation certainly is far more robust than Mitch McConnell’s initial pitch of $250 billion for small businesses for the Paycheck Protection Program, which is designed to stem layoffs and already ran out of funding last week.

Without criticizing leadership directly, Ocasio-Cortez signaled earlier this week that she might vote “no” on the package. And on Thursday afternoon told reporters that she was undecided, though it is still expected to easily clear the House. “It is a joke when Republicans say they have urgency around this bill,” she said in a fiery speech on the floor of Congress before the vote. A real solution can’t wait, she’s argued. “I understand the idea of an ‘interim’ patch bill, but if Congress doesn’t know when it will next convene, we need to vote on a bigger fix now,” she wrote on Twitter. “It is simply outrageous that Congress is considering voting on a small, patchwork bill after being out of session for a MONTH and recessing again without knowing when we will next convene. Thousands of people are DYING. PPP will quickly run out again. We need a bigger bill.”

Several outside progressive groups have adopted a similar posture to Ocasio-Cortez, with United We Dream, Popular Democracy, Indivisible, Demand Progress, and others, issuing statements opposing the legislation. The legislation, the groups assert, barely includes Democratic priorities—let alone progressive ones. But in Congress, even among progressives, Ocasio-Cortez has been lonely in voicing opposition to the interim funding bill. Some have expressed concern that the bill doesn’t do enough. “We have real concerns about giving away leverage now without getting some of the priorities that we need,” Pramila Jayapal, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Monday. “It’s going to be very difficult to support a package that doesn’t have some of the desperate relief we need for state and local governments, for people.” But aside from Ocasio-Cortez, other progressives have stopped short of opposing the legislation.