Welcome to the 597th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’re going to be talking about the U.S. House Representative from Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, Peter Roskam, who after serving in the Illinois state legislature from 1993 through 2006, has served six terms in Congress since winning office in the 2006 elections. That’s no small feat, considering 2006 was a Blue Wave year, his opponent in that race was (now Senator) Tammy Duckworth, and he attacked her stance on the Iraq War as “cut and run” which is a hell of a thing to say to an Iraq War veteran who lost both her legs in that conflict in a helicopter crash.
Still, Roskam is deeply connected within the GOP establishment. Back in the 1980s, Roskam was originally taught under the tutelage of former House Speaker Tom DeLay, who is a great example of a mentor you would want a member of Congress to have if you wanted them to learn about money laundering, before Roskam went on to work under Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, who you may know as the guy the anti-choice Hyde Amendment is named after, who was also the only member of Congress sued in the Savings and Loan Scandal, who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra hearings, and was one of the Congressional leaders who oversaw the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about an extramarital affair (note: Hyde had also once had an extramarital affair). So, Rep. Roskam’s two mentors were some of the most crooked, hypocritical, partisan bastards of note in Congress from the past half-century, but are decidedly not small fish in the Washington fish bowl. And when Hyde stepped down in his eighties, Roskam jumped at the opportunity to replace him, and in spite of his rhetoric against Duckworth as well as accusations that he had plagiarized several issue stances on his campaign website from the National Republican Congressional Committee… he won the seat over Duckworth with 51% of the vote to her 49% thanks in part to the party support he’d built up through the years.
Now, we made it pretty clear that Peter Roskam’s mentors had a long history of corruption while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. So you would think he’s already not a fan of ethics investigations. He’s probably even less of one after he himself was a target of one in 2013 after taking a $25,000 trip to Taiwan on the dime of Chinese Culture University. And that likely was his motivation for trying to defund the Office of Congressional Ethics at the start of the current session of Congress in January of 2017. Because what’s the point of being in Congress if you have to be ethical, right?
Our other big issue with Peter Roskam here at CSGOPOTD is that he’s a climate change denier. Back in his 2006 campaign, during a debate against Tammy Duckworth, he drew groans from the crowd after he called studies into global warming “junk science”. It may not be a coincidence, then, that one of the pieces of legislation he once sponsored, that called for oil drilling in the Alaska Arctic Wildlife refuge was co-sponsored by fellow CSGOPOTD, noted climate change denier, and fellow Illinois Congressman John Shimkus.
A brief look at Roskams’ supposedly “moderate” voting record:
- January 10th, 2007: Roskam votes against a Minimum Wage Increase.
- July 31st, 2007: Peter Roskam votes against the Equal Pay Bill.
- November 7th, 2007: Peter Roskam votes against ENDA, allowing the continued discrimination of LGBT citizens based on their sexual identity in the workplace.
- July 24th, 2008: Rep. Roskam votes against funding for the prevention of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
- January 9th, 2009: Roskam votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- April 29th, 2009: Peter Roskam votes against the Hate Crimes Expansion that would provide protections to LGBT citizens.
- July 31st, 2009: Roskam votes against the widely successful “Cash for Clunkers” program that helped save the American auto industry.
- June 30th, 2010: After Wall Street bankers taking unnecessary risks nearly imploded the global economy in 2007, legislation finally comes forward to prevent the same behaviors from being permitted in the future. The signature piece of legislation to prevent another financial meltdown was Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, which Peter Roskam 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. Roskam is apparently alright with ecological disasters continuing in the future, as he votes against it.
- December 8th, 2010: Rep. Roskam votes against the DREAM Act.
- December 15th, 2010: Roskam votes against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
- January 5th, 2011: Rep. Roskam votes the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for almost every attempt to do so since.
- February 18th, 2011: Peter Roskam votes to defund Planned Parenthood, on the very same day his “smaller government principles” compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
- March 17th, 2011: Rep. Roskam votes to cut funding to National Public Radio.
- September 15th, 2012: Rep. Roskam votes for the “No More Solyndras Act”.
- September 21st, 2012: Roskam votes for the “Stop the War on Coal Act”.
- January 15th, 2013: Peter Roskam votes against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
- February 28th, 2013: Rep. Roskam votes against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.
- June 19th, 2013: Peter Roskam votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Roskam votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown.
- Feb 26th, 2014: Peter Roskam goes “all in” on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by voting for the “Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act”.
- July 10th, 2014: Roskam 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.
- January 22nd, 2015: Peter Roskam votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
- February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Roskam 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: Roskam votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
- September 11th, 2015: Roskam votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Roskam 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: Roskam 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.
- February 2nd, 2016: Peter Roskam votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- February 16th, 2017: Roskam votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping.
- March 16th, 2017: Peter Roskam votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge’s written order.
- March 28th, 2017: Rep. Roskam votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers’ internet usage to businesses.
- May 4th, 2017: Roskam votes for the House GOP’s healthcare plan, that would take roughly 24 million people off their medical insurance allow 18,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, postpartum depression, and sexual assault as “pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Roskam would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Peter Roskam votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
Peter Roskam could be in serious jeopardy of losing his seat representing Illinois’ 6th in th 2018 elections, when you factor in that it voted in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and Roskam supports many of Trump’s craziest initiatives. We’re not just talking that he voted for Trumpcare, he has shown some support for Trump’s xenophobic Muslim ban, even as it has repeatedly been overturned by the courts as unconstitutional. Now, he’s begun cancelling town halls because of criticism over his Trumpcare vote… it’s not looking like an easy ride for him to a seventh term in office.
One Year Ago, August 9th, 2016: Jeb Bush (FL)… 2016 Update
Two Years Ago, August 9th, 2015: Jeb Bush (FL)… Original Profile
Three Years Ago, August 9th, 2014: John Koster (WA)