I'm watching CSPAN-2 right now. All I hear is this from the Clerk:
"Mr. [Senator's name]: No"
No. No. No. And more "no's."
One by one, Senators are voting against the common sense Coburn amendment to the budget bill to transfer the money dedicated to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" to use it as New Orleans aid. Republicans and Democrats alike (except a few, like Feingold, Kyl, Sununu, Landrieu, Conrad and Coburn so far) are voting "No."
A microphone has been left open, and I hear idle chatter, and a woman laughing.
There are no shouts of "shame! shame! shame!"
I give up...
If Democrats had hoped to have
any chance of being considered the party of Fiscal Responsibility, Rationality, Reason, Porkbusting, Common Sense, Sacrifice for the Greater Good, or Anti-Corruption, they have all just thrown it off the top of the Capitol dome.
Getting rid of the Bridge to Nowhere is one of the most common sense pieces of legislation I have heard of in a long long time. But, common sense apparently is not important when it comes to individual pork projects...even when the project is not even in your district. Even when the United States is in massive debt, its budget is being drained by misguided wars, and the President has never seen a pork bill he didn't like.
Instead of the Democrats, fiscal conservatives and intelligent Progressive will be shouting "shame! shame! shame!" If the Senators who voted "no" think that they had to vote this way in order to keep getting reelected, they are mistaken.
It is time for everyone, on both sides of the political spectrum, to start saying "no" to them. It is time for the American people to begin to demand that all elected representatives serve not just their reelection chances, but the entire country for the greater good, and greater nation.
For the record: Boxer, Clinton, Feinstein, Kerry and Obama all voted "no."
I give up on all of them. "We Can Do Better," indeed, Senator Reid. We can do better than the whole lot of you.