Welcome to what is the 873rd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the sitting U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, Trey Hollingsworth, who was first elected to office in 2016. He is the 12th wealthiest member of Congress as of this article’s posting, with a net worth of over $50 million. He self-funded his first campaign for Congress, having carpet-bagged his way up from his home in Tennessee to end up getting a seat in Congress.
And what immediately brought Trey Hollingsworth near the front of the queue of people we had planned on profiling was his recent comments on Covid-19, where he came out hard in favor of reopening the country, considering thousands of people dying “the lesser of two evils” when compared with the GDP being lower:
”The social scientists are telling us about the economic disaster that is going on,“ he said. "Our GDP is supposed to be down 20% alone this quarter. It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say more deaths is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office.”
To which, we have a fine rebuttal to say, “Go f*** yourself and your ‘big boy pants’, Trey. People’s lives matter more than your stock portfolio.”
Rest assured, his belief that the stock market is more important than human lives is reflected throughout his voting record:
- February 16th, 2017: Hollingsworth 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. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
- March 16th, 2017: Trey Hollingsworth 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. We feel safer already.
- May 4th, 2017: Hollingsworth votes for the GOP’s healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 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, post-partum depression, and sexual assault as “pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Hollingsworth 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: Trey Hollingsworth 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.
- October 3rd, 2017: Hollingsworth votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
- December 19th, 2017: Trey Hollingsworth votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
- February 18th, 2018: Rep. Hollingsworth and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and votes for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
- January 22nd, 2019: Hollingsworth can’t be arsed to vote for HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
- January 27th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth votes against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attack Hollingsworth our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
- February 28th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
- March 7th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
- March 14th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
- April 4th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- May 17th, 2019: Hollingsworth votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
- June 4th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
- July 16th, 2019: Trey Hollingsworth votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
- October 17th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
- December 18th, 2019: Rep. Hollingsworth ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Trey Hollingsworth is running for his third term in office in November, and while he has no less than five Democrats lined up to take him on in the general election. Indiana’s 9th Congressional District has a pretty advantageous +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, but with Democrats looking at a +8 to +9 advantage against generic candidates… we’d like to think that if they ran ads against a carpetbagging millionaire who talked about letting thousands of people die to “put your big boy pants on” and save the economy would perhaps still be someone who could be sent packing in the fall as the body count continues to grow, and could exceed 200,000 by Election Day.
One Year Ago, May 26th, 2019: Mike Coffman (CO)… 2019 Update
Two Years Ago, May 26th, 2018: Mike Coffman (CO)… 2018 Update
Three Years Ago, May 26th, 2017: Mike Coffman (CO)… 2017 Update
Four Years Ago, May 26th, 2016: Mike Coffman (CO)… Original Profile
Five Years Ago, May 26th, 2015: Thom Goolsby (NC)