I Support It, But Only After Voting Against It
Florida Republican John Mica praised the stimulus bill’s “recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future.” Alaska’s incorrigible Don Young “won a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners.”
With comments like these, you’d think both men were staunch supporters of the bill.
Their voting record says otherwise.
I’ve heard of hypocrisy, but praising passage of a bill you voted against has got to be one of the dumbest things a politician can do. If you like a bill, you vote for it. If you hate it, you vote against it. Don’t try to have it both ways by voting against something you support. That goes beyond Kerry’s candid admission of flip-flopping – this is an admission that your voting record is dishonest.
And sure enough, House Republicans are doing it. Unbelievable.
Just because you support a part of the bill as Mr. Mica did and Mr. Young did does not mean that you have to support the bill.
The idea has comical.
Mr. Mica is one of the staunchest economic conservatives and rarely supports large spending bills, however he is glad that while he does not support this legislation, that it is helping transportation (in which he is the ranking member.)
Please look back at past legislation and you will see that many time and individual will like one part of the bill and detest the others.
It’s not hypocrisy, it’s looking at the entire bill not just one section.
For someone that writes political novels I would expect you to know that.. Oh well 🙁
But he’s on record having opposed that transportation money. He certainly didn’t make any real effort to strip the bill of anything but that money.
He also claims to support tax cuts, but he’s voted against the largest tax cut in history (that same stimulus bill) on the grounds that the tax cuts and spending increases were too much together.
It’s fine for him to support pieces of legislation, but usually you do that while explaining why you voted against the rest of it. (As in, “I really like the light-rail provisions, but because the total package costs too much, I’m going to vote against it all.”)
The real problem is the overall hypocrisy in Congress. Republicans like Mica have railed against Democrats for voting for a non-binding budget resolution because it was “the largest tax increase in history” – except it wasn’t, it merely assumed that current law would stay that way and the Bush tax cuts’ self-executive expiration date would come to pass. If Mica and his party can do that to a budget resolution, why can’t Democrats do that with the stimulus bill – i.e., “Mica says he likes light-rail, but when given a chance to support light-rail, he voted against HR 1”.
I write political novels and have a master’s degree in political management. I know what I’m talking about. My commentary isn’t quite as nuanced, because blogging isn’t even my main hobby, much less my day job.
Besides, Don Young’s claim to victory on a bill he opposed was really the last straw on that type of hypocrisy.