So Allyson Schwartz has found herself in a clusterfuck with the latest Third Way fiasco, but earlier today, a Schwartz campaign aide defended a Schwartz budget vote that attacked SS, Medicare and Medicaid "leadership."
Jon Geeting from Keystone Politics discovered that Allyson Schwartz voted for the Cooper-LaTourette budgetin 2012, which was supported by Pete Peterson and Fix the Debt. Geeting wrote:
The Cooper-LaTourette budget had the backing of an array of Pete Peterson-funded astroturf groups like the Concord Coalition and Fix the Debt, while the center-left Center on Budget on Policy Priorities panned it as “significantly to the right of Simpson-Bowles” – a framework that progressive lawmakers and activists have broadly rejected for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Yesterday I defended Allyson Schwartz’s voting record on Social Security, but it turns out I was wrong as she was one of just 22 House Democrats to vote for Cooper-LaTourette.
Geeting then reached out the Allyson Schwartz campaign, who replied:
Allyson Schwartz is running for governor delivering a tough message Harrisburg needs to hear:
Pennsylvanians aren’t going to let a lack of leadership hold them back any longer. In Congress, she sent a tough message to George W. Bush when she fought his reckless attempt to privatize Social Security, and to Paul Ryan when she led the Democratic fight to stop the Ryan budget. That’s why Allyson has been endorsed 5 times by the National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare and the Alliance for Retired Americans.
This one vote, even as she disagreed with many of the bill’s specifics, was intended to send a tough message, too: That a hopelessly-divided Washington had to finally sit down, act like adults, and cooperate with one another across party lines. This is exactly the kind of bold, tough, outspoken leadership Pennsylvania needs in the governor’s office.
So according to the Schwartz campaign, forcing granny to eat cat-food is leadership because there are those in the Democratic Party who have to act like the adults in the room, which is code for setting themselves away from their progressive liberal counterparts.