Pardon the stuck caps lock key. Occasionally, though, I read something that gets under my fur and produces real anger.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Republican leadership’s tether to the Tea Party, flutters the hearts of the government-bashing, budget-slicing faithful with his relentless attacks on runaway federal spending. To Cantor, an $8 billion high-speed rail connecting Las Vegas to Disneyland is wasteful “pork-barrel spending.”
... SNIP ...
Letters obtained by Newsweek show him pressing the Transportation Department to spend nearly $3 billion in stimulus money on a high-speed-rail project—not the one he derided in Nevada, but another in his home state. “Virginia ... will demonstrate that this historic investment in rail will create jobs, reduce congestion, spur economic growth and improve our environment,” says a letter he signed with other Virginia members in October 2009, cribbing President Obama’s own argument for the stimulus.
Daily Beast / Newsweek
And of course it's not just Eric "Punchable Face" Cantor.
As the government showdown over debt continues—the so-called congressional supercommittee negotiating cuts has been floundering for weeks—Newsweek found about five dozen of the most fiscally conservative Republicans, from Tea Party freshmen like Allen West to anti-spending presidential candidates like Rick Perry and Ron Paul, trying to gobble up the very largesse they publicly disown, in the time-honored, budget-busting tradition of bringing home the bacon for local constituents.
Allen West, Rick Perry, Ron Paul ... sounds like a Tea Brained Hall of Fame.
Republican David Vitter has been one of many members who have consistently opposed stimulative measures Obama has tried to sell, including the Recovery Act. “It’s not real job creation ... We need to act on the economy, but that doesn’t mean typical Washington pork-barrel spending,” he said in February 2009 at a rally against the stimulus on the Capitol’s steps.
Yet two months after railing against bloated spending, the Louisiana senator appealed to Chu to fund an activated-carbon power plant in Red River Parish, La. “The project is expected to provide a significant economic impact in an area of Louisiana that is in desperate need of quality manufacturing jobs,” Vitter wrote.
The Dirty Dozen
- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
- Allen West
- Ron Paul
- Rick Perry
- Michele Bachmann
- Mike Enzi
- Fred Upton
- Speaker John Boehner
- Darrell Issa
- Majority Whip Keven McCarthy
- John McCain
Be perfectly clear: these people are all Keynesian at heart. Which makes their focus on cutting spending, and opposition to stimulus, reprehensible. They are deliberately sabotaging the nations economy for political gain.
The Republican Party has no interest in governing, merely in power. They have no interest in the national welfare, merely in cutting taxes for the wealthy. They have no interest in the national defense, except as a source of pork.
They no longer serve any useful purpose in our nation's politics.