After a lifetime of public service (he did help catch the Green River killer) Dave Reichert (R-enabler) seems to have lost his soul. Dave’s votes in congress already this session clearly and consistently place Party over country and constituents. Dave’s votes are not unique, as virtually all Republicans vote in lock step, but Washington’s Eighth District is trending purple with bits nestled in Seattle’s commute-shed. Fearful R’s redistricted the Eighth during Dave’s current reign to strategically capture part of more conservative eastern Washington. This was the first time congressional boundaries were forced across Washington’s ‘Cascade curtain’. Dave’s recent active and petulant defense of the no-American-should-have Health Care Act, aka the Republican Insurance Plan, completes his coming out as a true creature of the corrupted class running giddy and reckless in Washington DC.
Contrasting Dave’s actions with his words reveals a real dedication to using alternative facts to promote the inhumane Republican agenda. Through Dave’s polished public image he is increasingly willing, and more skilled at, selling snake-oil. Dave is masterful at providing verbal cover to the underlying viciousness of his, and his colleagues, actions. Dave pretends to not fully embrace the delegitimizing of our government that he is complicit in. But Dave and his fellow ideologues must always own this mess.
Behold, in a very short time Dave has compiled quite a record. This factual record of his actual votes leaves little doubt about whose interests Dave chooses to champion. Here’s a hint: they are rarely ours.
ETHICS: Dave’s first vote in the 115th Congress was to abolish the Office of Congressional Ethics, because, reasons. Yes, someone figured out this was a really stupid idea. They were actually shamed enough that they backed off, and that’s saying something.
GUNS and MENTAL HEALTH: Dave voted to weaken mental health screening for firearm purchasers and is sneakily silent about his pro-gun proclivities. Yet he refuses to hold town halls for fear of a Gabby Giffords like incident. Dave says one thing but then does another. He states a concern about appearing in public for fear of gun toting mentally unstable individuals then actually votes to repeal existing law addressing exactly this concern.
ENVIRONMENT: Dave sometimes gets it right on the environment. But, oops, then he voted to once again allow coal companies to decimate and bury streams, assuring the release of even more carbon and hastening global climate change. Dave considers himself an environmentalist. He is willing to publicly acknowledge human induced climate change. Well that’s an awfully low bar and the crowd he runs with intends to slash all climate related funding, and satellites. So, here too Dave’s actions fail to match his lofty words.
FEDERAL LANDS: Dave voted to rescind implementation of new BLM rules two years in the making to better manage our federal lands and encourage public input. Dave ominously voted to devalue federal property, our property. This eases the path to selling it off, even if doing so loses us money. One might wonder who stands to benefit.
WOMEN”S HEALTH: The primal desire to oppress women and legislate women’s liberties, lives and bodies is alive and well in Dave. The Hyde amendment, which already unilaterally prohibits any federal funds for anybody, anywhere in the world if they even think about abortion/s, somehow just isn’t enough. If Planned Parenthood has to be defunded, eliminating access to care for millions of women and men, well, that loss of access, so often touted by defensive republicans, is collateral damage, don’t you know. Apparently the direct and measurable negative impacts on people’s lives are just another sacrifice on the ideological altar of ‘abortion is bad, but once you are born, or once you are a parent, well, moocher, we won’t even pay for the birth’, because, meanness.
TRUMP’S TAXES: Then there’s the Popular Vote Loser’s unreleased tax returns that Dave voted not to demand. Dave says he thinks the PVL should release his taxes, he just didn’t vote for it when given the chance. Words. Actions. Words. Actions. Is it wrong to expect that a legislator’s votes match their words? Finding ways to justify and obfuscate voting against the best interests of one’s constituents seems a new blood sport in our nation’s capital. We should all demand to know who is paying, and who owns, the person sworn in as our president, our sadly-not-acting president.
TRUMPCARE: This is perhaps the most egregious example of Dave’s mastery of ‘what I say and what I do are not the same’. Dave has provided an exemplary example of his, and his colleagues, hypocrisy. On his website is a letter written by Dave, and three other republican assassins in the Washington State legislative delegation, McMorris-Rodgers (WA 5 ), Herrera-Beutler (WA 3), and Newhouse (WA 4 ). This letter is a response to a letter from Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D-good guy) expressing his concern for the health and well being of Washingtonians. Their letter states:
- “We firmly believe that everyone...should have access to health coverage” that “most importantly be affordable”. By no standard does the proposed legislation, voted out of the Ways and Means Committee by Dave, meet even the low bar ‘affordability’. Health insurance for folks in their 60’s, if anyone offers it, could again be sold at five times the cost of the same product for youngsters in their 20’s. Because why, exactly? Of course ‘access’ is a code word for less, less of everything, less health. Access is code for ‘all the things, including actual health insurance, that are being taken away’. Where is there a promise of anything better?
- They write that folks “deserve health care reform that is done thoughtfully and responsibly with a smooth transition”. Well some 17,000 people could die next year simply because this bill becomes law. By whose definition is that ‘smooth’ or ‘responsible’? It is a lie. It is a failure of governance.
- Their disingenuous and intentionally deceitful letter states that “no one should have the rug pulled out from underneath them”. Well, really. How nice of you. Fourteen thousand people will immediately wonder where the ‘rug’ (aka their health insurance) went.
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Oh, and tax cuts for well off people, of course. Almost forgot about all of those. Maybe that is why Dave is smiling so. The billions of ‘government savings’ is largely revenue not collected from those well off.
The Republican defense, that the next step in their devious and destructive plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act will somehow make it better, is another lie. Every action they take has the actual effect of laying waste to access, and affordability, and actual concern for working people or anybody but the rich. Why would anyone believe that Republicans’ true intentions have anything to do with improving, or providing better funding for, health care for anybody? It is a conscious strategy, and a trap for democrats down the road.
TOWN HALLS: Elected to his current position in 2005, to my knowledge Dave has never held a public town hall. His staff will not confirm or deny this. They will ask for your phone number in case he ever decides to hold one. I suggest they are lying, absent any information that the Congressman is holding a town hall, which he does not.
Believe what they do, not what they say. Actions speak louder than words.
Now, having never done this before, I will, perhaps, need to navigate comments…
Footnotes: As yet there are no announced opponents to Rep Reichert. Local Dems are vetting a pool of candidates and there are numerous Indivisible groups that have sprung up and are active from Puyallup to Chelan.
I want to acknowledge that Dave Reichert’s staff are exceptionally courteous. They are well trained. They are frustratingly good at their jobs, and they are very courteous.
A couple of letters to the local Editor. I could not have hoped for better Titles ;-)