“Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” is proud to present our 465th original profile, and the subject of it will be the sitting U.S. House Representative from Wyoming’s At-Large District in Congress, Cynthia Lummis. She was a long time member of the Wyoming state legislature and multi-millionaire heir to a ranching family first elected back in 2008 in a hard fought race against Democrat Gary Trauner, who hit her hard on her stance on privatizing Social Security. Lummis still managed to get a win even though polling had her running even with Trauner prior to the race, and she went to Washington, where she’s currently serving in her fourth term after winning re-election in 2014 with 68% of the vote over Richard Grayson, who sadly did not think to run on the ballot as “Robin” or “Nightwing”.
But the warnings from 2008 that Gary Trauner gave were not unfounded, as Cynthia Lummis has frequently advocated for going after Social Security in one form or another during her tenure, including when she introduced HR 1160 to the floor of the House, a bill that would raise the minimum retirement age to qualify for Social Security from 65 to 70. It mercifully failed to advance, but she has railed against Social Security and any other government program she feels is an unnecessary entitlement.
Like the Affordable Care Act. It wasn’t enough to participate in the smear campaign against healthcare reform that claimed that its creation would lead to “healthcare rationing”, one of the biggest political lies going in 2009 and 2010. No, Cynthia Lummis took her rage against the ACA to a whole new level in December of 2014… and out on Jonathon Gruber, the ACA Architect, during a hearing about the initial glitches on the Obamacare website by blaming the technical mishaps on her husband’s recent death, and taking it out on the witness:
“On October 24, the week before election, my husband went to sleep and never woke up. He had a massive heart attack in his sleep at age 65. A perfectly, by all accounts, healthy man. Come to find out, in a conversation with his physician after he died, he chose not to have one of the tests, the last tests, his doctor told him to have. This happened to coincide with the time that we were told that we were not covered by Obamacare. I’m not telling you that my husband died because of Obamacare. He died because he had a massive heart attack in his sleep. …I want to suggest that regardless of what happened to me personally, that there have been so many glitches in the passage and implementation of Obamacare that have real-life consequences on peoples’ lives. The so-called glibness that has been referenced today has direct consequences for real American people. So get over your damn glibness.”
Now, why was that a load of bulls***? The Affordable Care Act was designed to provide healthcare for those who otherwise would not be able to afford medical insurance… people who tend to be less well off. Cynthia Lummis and her husband were worth an estimated $20-75 million. AND he had health insurance. He could have just paid for the one test Lummis claims he didn’t get that would have saved his life, because he was, according to her, confused about his enrollment status.
There is no tragedy the GOP is unwilling to exploit, it seems, to try to deny health care to those who need to be able to afford it.
We’ll look at her voting record now, just to complete the case we’re making that she’s not right in the head:
- January 27th, 2009: Lummis votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- April 29th, 2009: Cynthia Lummis votes against the Hate Crimes Expansion that would provide protections to LGBT citizens.
- June 30th, 2010: Wall Street bankers taking unnecessary risks nearly imploded the global economy in 2007. The signature piece of legislation to prevent another financial meltdown was Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, which Cynthia Lummis voted against.
- July 30th, 2010: Months after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a bill comes to the floor to better regulate off-shore drilling. Lummis is apparently alright with ecological disasters continuing in the future, as she votes against it.
- December 8th, 2010: Rep. Lummis votes against the DREAM Act.
- December 15th, 2010: Lummis votes against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
- December 22nd, 2010: Cynthia Lummis votes against the Zadroga Bill, to provide healthcare for first responders from 9/11.
- On January 5th, 2011, Rep. Lummis co-sponsors the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She has voted for every attempt to do so since.
- On February 18th, 2011, Cynthia :Lummis votes to defund Planned Parenthood, on the very same day her “smaller government principles” compelled her to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
- May 31st, 2011: Cynthia Lummis votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, which if not lifted, economists warn could lead to the collapse of not just the American economy, but the global economy. Worse yet, even the Republicans’ threatening to hold it hostage during this time led to the United States’ having its credit rating decreased by Standard and Poor’s for the first time in its history.
- January 15th, 2013: Lummis votes against Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief.
- February 28th, 2013: Cynthia Lummis votes against the new version of the Violence Against Women Act that would offer protections to lesbians and Native Americans.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Lummis voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown. When the time came for the vote to re-open the government, Lummis voted to keep it closed.
- July 10th, 2014: Lummis votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
- July 28th, 2014: Cynthia Lummis, during a House Oversight hearing on the faux IRS Scandal, fear-mongers that a rebellion is brewing and the hearings are necessary because as she puts it, “Our constituents are mortified and scared, and are gonna take matters into their own hands because they don’t feel we have the ability to do it ourselves.”
- October 13th, 2014: During the last debate prior to the election for her Congressional seat, Rep. Lummis does a bit of fear-mongering about the Ebola Virus, calling for a travel ban from West Africa until “things settle down”. The same sort of travel ban that doctors from the Centers of Disease Control reported would only make matters worse.
- On January 22nd, 2015, an anti-abortion bill, HR 7, was moving through the House, and was halted because even some members of the GOP were put off by the language in the bill regarding its definition of rape. Cynthia Lummis, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway. Hell, she co-sponsored it.
- February 3rd, 2015, Rep. Lummis co-sponsors and votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
March 3rd, 2015, Cynthia Lummis votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
- May 13th, 2015: Rep. Lummis votes for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks.
- September 11th, 2015: Lummis votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015, Rep. Lummis co-sponsors and votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: Lummis co-sponsors and votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks. One terrorist had a fake passport of a member of Assad’s army, apparently to create a false trail to help in their escape, or hoping that the attacks would be blamed on Syrian refugees, and the governments of nations like France and the United States would fall for it and not allow refugees to escape ISIS abroad. And… Lummis fell for it.
- February 2nd, 2016: Cynthia Lummis votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
So, good news and bad news time?
The good news is Cynthia Lummis is retiring from office in 2016, and going to call it a career. The bad news? A former CSGOPOTD who failed to get elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014 will be trying for her seat. That’s right… Liz Cheney, the spawn of former Vice-President Dick “How has he not been arrested for war crimes, exactly?” Cheney, is planning to take Cynthia Lummis’ place to represent the same seat in Wyoming that her father once did in the U.S. House. This despite the fact that Liz Cheney has barely ever lived in Wyoming. Six Republicans are battling it out in the GOP Primary for the seat, so it’s still not a sure thing that Cheney will replace Lummis. Let’s hope not.