It's been a long, cold winter in Colorado Congressional District 4, but the voting record of Representative Betsy Markey has been getting her constituents hot. Her vote on health care legislation this week may well determine her political future.
Up here in the mountains of Colorado Congressional District 4, we're looking forward to Democratic caucus Tuesday evening. We'll get to see our neighbors, at least the ones that aren't busy scraping the McCain stickers off their trucks.
Since it's been so cold and icy this winter, we've been spending lots of time on the phone, and our neighbors say that Representative Betsy Markey has a lot of people angry. It seems they weren't thinking "Anyone's better than (Marilyn) Musgrave" when they worked and voted for her eighteen months ago. They actually thought Betsy Markey would work to help the middle class folks who boosted her into Congress, since if they had stayed home we would still be living in "Musgrave Country".
When Representative Markey voted against "cramdown" relief for homeowners in bankruptcy she said it was in support of "fiscal responsibility". Her vote against the President's budget was due to "fiscal responsibility" too. Her vote against the Health care reform bill passed by the House on Christmas Eve was once again for "fiscal responsibility".
"No health care for you, it costs too much!"
Merry Christmas From Betsy Markey, Your Representative in Congress.
It appears Betsy Markey may be an important vote on health care reform this week. By all accounts it will be a close vote. Because she's been ducking interviews and calls lately, and saying that she needs more time to study the legislation, it looks like she plans to vote "No" again. So she would once again court the "Republican lites", who will vote for her Republican opponent next November regardless of her record.
My phone calls tell me this is the final opportunity for Betsy Markey to save her seat in Congress by having the courage to do the right thing for the people who actually elected her to office. The people who worked and voted for her in CD4 aren't "Republican lite", and they need the relief that passing this imperfect health care reform legislation into law will provide. Not because it's simply wonderful (single payer) or anything close, but because it's the only relief in sight and we need her to take the deal on the table. We can't wait another thirty years for the stars to line up for the legislation we'd LIKE to have.
We're mostly not wealthy folks up here. Our government is nothing more than all of us working together for the common good. We are fiscally responsible folks - we don't want to go into debt to fund a trumped-up war for oil; we don't want to go into debt for the sake of allowing Wall Street banks and insurance companies to operate in a "free market" (of greed) without appropriate regulation; we don't want to go into debt to provide massive tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of taxpayers. Those debts, incurred before 2009, are not "fiscally responsible" in our view.
We do, however, want to help our friends and neighbors be able to go to the doctor and the hospital when they need to without losing the homes and savings for their kids that they work so hard for. Government can and should help provide for the common things that we all need, and help folks out when economic times are tough due to Wall Street's greedy excess. When we worked the office, made phone calls, and knocked on our neighbors' doors for Betsy Markey in 2008 that's what we thought she would work and vote for in Congress. So far lots of us are disappointed.
As we talk amongst ourselves before tomorrow's precinct caucus, most of us think it's too bad we don't have a Democratic primary opponent to support tomorrow night. Because if we did we're almost sure it would help Congresswoman Markey do the courageous and right thing by us with her vote this week on the health care legislation we need so desperately.
Can Betsy Markey's vote on health care this week save her seat in Congress? We'll all meet up here in the mountains tomorrow night, have some coffee, and discuss it in our caucus. And it seems to me a lot of us are just about one more "fiscally responsible" No vote away from being too busy to help Betsy Markey out in 2010.