Saturday, October 5, 2013

Cathy McMorris Rodgers - Hypocrite

House Republicans are working hard to reframe the message and do damage control over their shutdown of the government, a shutdown they planned for last January. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, always counted on to be loyal to the cause, has been at the forefront with her cable news appearances, Facebook posts, and YouTube videos. Yesterday, she added an email to the mix and that's what I'm focusing on here.
Cliff Owen - AP Photo
I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with an update on the recent events in Washington, DC. On October 1, the federal government shut down many operations – and furloughed hundreds of thousands of its employees–after the President and Senate Democrats refused to negotiate any of the funding bills the House sent over to them in the past three weeks.

After the House and Senate each passed a budget, the Senate tried 18 times to conference so they could work out the differences. 18 times since April. Not only that, but Speaker Boehner made it clear last January that he is done negotiating with President Obama. And now with the onset of their brinkmanship, the House Republicans complain about a lack of cooperation?

The House passed a budget bill that kept the government open until Dec 15 but defunded the Affordable Care Act even though it was explicitly clear the Senate wouldn't pass it and the President would veto it. This is not about "any of the bills". This is about stopping the Affordable Care Act. Senator Cruz made that very clear when he whipped up the Tea Party fervor during his 21-hour grandstand focused entirely on the Affordable Care Act.

Or is it?

It was an extraordinarily difficult thing to see happen.  Nearly 800,000 federal employees don’t know when they’ll receive their next pay check.  They want certainty, decisiveness, and confidence that their elected leaders can protect them.  That’s why Republicans are working every day to get this government open again and get the people of Eastern Washington and America back to work.  And it’s frustrating and unfortunate that the President and Senate Democrats are standing in the way of letting that happen.

Now that the repercussions of the shutdown are clear and most Americans blame the Republicans, Cathy McMorris Rodgers repeats herself to emphasize it's not their fault.

I have voluntarily chosen to withhold my salary during the shutdown, and it goes without saying that I’ve suspended all political fundraising events.

The vast majority of our politicians are wealthy enough to forgo their salary for a while. I would venture that the opposite is true for 800,000 federal employees.

But this is about much more than a debate over a funding bill.  It’s a fundamental difference about how to govern, about what kind of future we want to leave for our children and grandchildren.  Let me explain how we’ve reached this point.  For three years, since Obamacare passed on a strictly partisan vote – pushed through with every parliamentary tactic in the book – the Administration and Senate have refused to listen to the American people.  Sadly, the only time we have made any progress is when faced with one “fiscal crisis” or another, each one brought on by the federal government’s unprecedented growth in spending.  Even today, the federal government is spending over $600 billion more a year than we bring in – and that number would be twice as high if the House had not forced spending reforms the last time we came up against the debt ceiling.

It'n not a debate over a funding bill at all. It's only about stopping the Affordable Care Act. Go back and read her letter in which she believes "that fairness dictates that my pay be held until such time that normal government operations resume." The second paragraph makes it clear this is about the Affordable Care Act. Senator Cruz made that clear. The Affordable Care Act has survived a Supreme court challenge and a presidential election. It's the law and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who said at her Spokane town hall that it would not be defunded, is working hard to defund it, delay it, or stop it altogether.

Or is she?

Enjoy the irony of her complaint that the Affordable Care Act passing on a strictly partisan vote. It comes from a member of a party that only brings up a bill for a vote when they know it's supported by the majority of their party.

Her complaint of a $600 billion deficit fails to mention that the deficit dramatically decreased. Why? Because of increased revenue from the expired Bush tax cuts and increased payments from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

For the first time since the Korean War, total federal spending has gone down for two years in a row. The Budget Control Act (BCA), which the Republicans passed, was the largest spending reduction bill of the last 25 years – amounting to $630 billion in savings over five years.  It was the largest deficit control bill since 1981 not to contain a penny in tax increases.  Our legislation successfully protected 99 percent of Americans from a tax increase on a permanent basis, and ensured that almost all of the 2001 and 2003 tax rates were made permanent, including the death tax and lower rates on capital gains and dividends.

All this is here to make you forget that the reason for the shutdown is to defund, delay, or stop the Afford Care Act.

Or is it?

We have ideas to revive our economy – from the Keystone Pipeline Project and energy expansion, to tax reform that would spur a new generation of American manufacturing jobs, and health care reforms that would reduce consumer costs and bring competition back into the marketplace.  But the Senate believes their slim majority gives them the right to ignore everything coming from this side of the Capitol.  And Americans are paying the price because of it.

Again, more "hey look over there" to take more mind off the defunding of the Affordable Care Act.

With just two weeks to go until the Treasury runs out of money, with federal agencies closed and national parks padlocked, our message to the President and Democratic-controlled Senate could not be clearer: come to the negotiating table.  Listen to the American people.  We don’t expect to get 100 percent of what we want, but we represent one half of the legislative branch and we insist on being heard.  In times of divided government, both bodies of Congress and both parties have come to the table and worked out their differences.  This time should be no different.  Congress works best with negotiations and compromises, not shutdowns and crises.

Republicans have dug themselves into a hole with their brinkmanship so Cathy McMorris Rodgers passes out more shovels. So why do we have this manufactured crisis?

It is what Tea Party Republicans have wanted to do this whole time because the Williamsburg Accord doesn't go far enough.

9 comments:

Commom Cents said...

Bipartisan bills are advancing in both houses to pay federal employees. There was even talk about a Sunday session. There is far more concern for federal employees to get paid--even when they are not working--than for any other victims of the shutdown, including headstart and sick children.

Democrats say they won't negotiate a piecemeal resolution to the impasse. Oh, except for federal employees. Sorry cancer kids!

We taxpayers get only unemployment, or nothing, when laid off or we strike. We certainly don't get an act of Congress, or sympathy from federal workers. Our wages and benefits have stagnated compared to federal employees for decades.

Symbolically, feds summarily executed an unarmed, troubled working class mother in front of her baby daughter's eyes, in front of the Capitol, earning instant praise from both parties. Get off my lawn, said the President. Or else.

So now, we are going to pay federal workers not to work. OK fine. But what are federal workers going to do for American workers in return? Go back to your fortress offices and illegal peepholes, your fancy bars and gated "communities" and laugh at Americans for being chumps?

How bout we just pay federal employees the minimum wage instead, with full backpay when the shutdown ends?

Bet we'd get Congressional action for a higher federal minimum wage, now.

Um... said...

http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/congress-likely-to-give-federal-workers-their-back-pay-at-end-of-shutdown-now-in-day-5/2013/10/05/1e6fa11e-2d96-11e3-b141-298f46539716_story.html?tid=HP_lede

Great for the feds. But what about Americans?

Two liter bottle said...

It's hypocritical that Democrats aren't asking questions about the muder of Miriam Casey. So, guns are bad--except when misused by federal employees with badge? So our powerful President is a victim of racism and we need to speak up about it, but it's ok for his secret service to use excessive force on a working class (and black) woman? Why the silence?

Reminds me of the shameful, silent Spokane city council press conference after the murder of Otto Zehm. No questions please, we're Democrats.

With the Casey murder, and federal employees succesfully elbowing their way to the front of the refunding line, there seems to be plenty of hypocrisy to go around.

Anonymous said...

Well, the family of Carey (not Casey) is asking some good pointed questions, though getting no answers.

I disagree there was silence. Lots of cheering from Democrats and Republicans, until they saw how ugly that looked on camera.

Still, not a word of sympathy to her family.

After 13 years of Bush-Obama, what have we become?





Deep Bloat said...

I doubt any real connection between Carey and Obama. But, has the press even asked the President if he knew this woman?

A question would be pretty much standard, particularly given the circumstances: intrusion into the White House grounds, a death, and the police spreading the story that the woman was delusional and thought she had an appointment with the President, or that he was stalking her.

Normal police procedure would be to test the story with all parties, even if unlikely. Has the media asked the police if they've talked to Obama?

Also, do we know the evidentiary source of the communication/meeting/stalking stories? Also, why are the cops putting those stories out to the public at this stage of the investigation? Carey's family is quite rightly angry at the sloppy handling of the investigation.

And remember, it seemed EXTREMELY unlikely that Clinton was playing sex games with an intern in the oval office using a cigar while talking on the phone to a congressman. Also, the Clinton white house originally portrayed Lewinsky how? A nut, and a slut.

Still the one aspect of the story as told by the media that I do find unlikely is that the police shooting isn't on video. If nothing else, the press should be pursuing that claim. Seriously, the most camera-heavy block of real estate on the entire planet, and she was killed near a security booth.

C'mon media. Obama is your darling, but at least put in a minimum effort.

Different strokes said...

If an unarmed woman with a child rammed my front gate (if I had one), and my heavily armed guards (if I had any) chased her down and killed her, I would be suprised if the police didn't at least ask if I knew her, and promptly. Even if there was evidence of psychiatric treatment.

Anon, anon said...

Typical anonymous "sources" story, this one from ABC. These facts should be verifiable on the record, why didn't ABC verify them?

Sources told ABC News that Connecticut police had twice in 2012 been called by Miriam Carey's boyfriend, who reported the woman was delusional, acting irrationally and putting her infant daughter in danger.

Carey, 34, a dental hygienist from Stamford, Conn., was killed by police Thursday after trying to ram a White House gate and leading cops on a chase down Pennsylvania Avenue with her 1-year-old daughter in the car. The toddler was uninjured and placed in police custody.

According to sources Carey believed she was the "prophet of Stamford" and was capable of communicating with Obama.


Carey's family admits post partun depression, but denies delusion. See her sister's interview on NBC.

Valarie Carey said officials' descriptions of her sister are "not the Miriam we knew."

"She was not walking around delusional, which is what we really want the public to understand," she said.
Huffpo, NBC

Also, per earlier reports, Carey was shot by Capitol Police AND secret service (not just "police.") Who shot her is a very important legal distinction. Especially if military were present.

Anonymous said...

A toddler who watches her mother gunned down, and is then seized by her mother's killers, is not "uninjured," whether or not the killing proves justified.

The Obama administration needs to release the tapes.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of hypocrisy, will Democrats condemn Obama's rendition program?

Or is it just bad when Bush did it?