The Senate as you are well aware by now passed a sweetened version of the bailout Tuesday evening. The House voted again today and complied, as I suspected they would. So the dirty deed is now done. Bear in mind that this bill was rife with waist added by the Senate on Tuesday night that had nothing to do with the economical turmoil.
$2 million tax benefit for makers of wooden arrows for children
$100 million tax break to benefit auto racetrack owners
$192 million in rebates on excise taxes for the Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum industry
$148 million in tax relief for U.S. wool fabric producers
$49 million tax benefit for fishermen and other plaintiffs who sued over the 1989 tanker Exxon Valdez spill.
People, are you not outraged? If so, ask yourself why you might be going to the voting booth in November to return the same people to office who just voted for one of the largest Federal power grabs in American history and threw almost a trillion dollars of money we don’t have down the toilet. Are those of you in South Carolina prepared to give Lindsey Graham another six years? Think twice. He’s one of the culprits. Richard Burr also voted for it on behalf of North Carolina. Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) opposed the measure. Additionally, both Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama voted for the bailout as did VP candidate Joe Biden.
I can’t get the vote information from the House yet. The Web site must be getting swamped with traffic because it’s timing out on me, but I’ll post it as soon as I have it available.
Update: I now have the House roll. Sue Myrick and Gresham Barrett flipped on this, voting for the bailout today, whereas they voted against it before.
As I’m sure you have heard by now, the $700 billion bailout failed to pass the House of Representatives today by a mere 13 votes. I was opposed to this bailout, so I am rather pleased, for now. They’ll try something again. I just have a huge issue with this theory that corporations can privatize all of their gains but socialize their losses. That just doesn’t seem quite right to me.
This video pretty much sums up my thoughts.
So how did your representative vote? Did they vote to use your tax dollars to bail out Wall Street fat cats or did they vote to save your tax dollars?
Voting for the bailout were:
Bob Etheridge (D-NC-02)
David Price (D-NC-04)
Mel Watt (D-NC-12)
Brad Miller (D-NC-13)
Henry Brown (R-SC-01)
Joe Wilson (R-SC-02)
Bob Inglis (R-SC-04)
John Spratt (D-SC-05)
Jim Clyburn (D-SC-06)
Voting against the heinous bailout were:
G.K. Butterfield (D-NC-01)
Walter Jones (R-NC-03)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05)
Howard Coble (R-NC-06)
Mike McIntyre (D-NC-07)
Robin Hayes (R-NC-08)
Sue Myrick (R-NC-09)
Patrick McHenry (R-NC-10)
Heath Shuler (D-NC-11)
Gresham Barrett (R-SC-03)
Boy, the South Carolina delegation sure sucks a nut. David Price is no surprise. He loves using your money to give special favors to all of his corporate friends. Same with Henry Brown. I expected Watt to be on the yea list as well because he is a Socialist. Overall it looks to be just about split down the middle. Now you know who is on your side and who is pining for the Rockefellers.
The U.S. Senate today overwhelmingly sent President Bush a spending bill of $634 billion to keep the government “operating beyond the current budget year.” If only that were the case. This budget passage, as every other, consisted of a hogfest of a Congressional pen of pigs in starched white shirts feeding from the trough that you and I provided. This thing is stuffed with thousands of earmarks in addition to $25 billion of taxpayer funded loans to help bailout the automakers. The bill was presented in its final form from the House to the Senate as H.R. 2638, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008, sponsored by none other than our very own Representative David Price (D-NC-04).
How did our representatives vote? As usual, in the Senate Jim DeMint stood up and vocally opposed the legislation. Lindsey Graham joined him in voting against it. Richard Burr made a rare and unusual move, voting Present, Giving Live Pair. What this means is that somebody else who not present at the vote and knew they wouldn’t be who planned on voting the opposite way Burr was made a deal with him to vote present so that the outcome wouldn’t be altered by their absence. In other words, for the sake of argument, let’s say Burr was hypothetically going to vote No, but John McCain was absent and was planning to vote Yes which would cancel out Burr’s vote anyway. McCain would ask Burr to vote Present then so that the same result is produced. As I said, this is just a hypothetical. Burr may have intended to vote Yes and made a deal with an absent Senator who wanted to vote against it. And we can’t forget Liddy Dole who as usual voted for her pork.
In the House we had the following voting for the waste:
The House passed H.R. 6899 last night, otherwise known as the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act. As I touched on yesterday, this is the House version of Lindsey Graham’s “Gang of 10″ bill that will do absolutely nothing to open up oil reserves off of our shores and lower gas prices. This bill is nothing more than political cover so that politicians can go into the November election lying to their constituents that they voted for offshore drilling, when they didn’t. Most of the coastal oil reserves will remain untapped under this bill and will have no effect. Furthermore, the states will get no royalties from the drilling, so which state is going to okay this and take the slight risk of an oil spill without any revenue from it? None of them will and Nancy Pelosi knows that. Let’s not forget the tax increase the oil companies will receive as well which will get passed on to you and me when we’re buying our gas.
So who in the Carolinas voted for this hoax? Who will lie to you between now and Election Day and claim they voted to lower your prices at the pump? A lot of them.
Democracy Corps is James Carville’s organization. This poll was taken from August 20th through August 26th.
NC-01
Party
% of Vote
G.K. Butterfield
D
76%
Dean Stephens
R
18%
NC-02
Party
% of Vote
Bob Etheridge
D
55%
Dan Mansell
R
38%
NC-03
Party
% of Vote
Walter Jones
R
67%
Craig Weber
D
21%
NC-04
Party
% of Vote
David Price
D
70%
BJ Lawson
R
25%
NC-05
Party
% of Vote
Virginia Foxx
R
48%
Roy Carter
D
46%
NC-06
Party
% of Vote
Howard Coble
R
71%
Teresa Sue Bratton
D
23%
NC-07
Party
% of Vote
Mike McIntyre
D
56%
Will Breazeale
R
35%
NC-08
Party
% of Vote
Robin Hayes
R
50%
Larry Kissell
D
42%
NC-09
Party
% of Vote
Sue Myrick
R
58%
Harry Taylor
D
31%
NC-10
Party
% of Vote
Patrick McHenry
R
54%
Daniel Johnson
D
39%
NC-11
Party
% of Vote
Heath Shuler
D
66%
Carl Mumpower
R
27%
Now you should bear in mind that the samples were very small, less than 100 people in each Congressional district, so there is going to be a larger margin of error than in most polls. However, most of these percentages seem fairly accurate to me. The only two I question is NC-05 and NC-08. I don’t think that Virginia Foxx is in a statistical tie with Roy Carter, though I don’t doubt he isn’t close to her. I also think the gap between Robin Hayes and Larry Kissell is smaller than the eight point spread shown in this poll. Shuler is crushing Mumpower which I have been saying since the birth of this blog would be the case no matter which Republican Heath runs against. Plus, the fact that Mumpower’s race has been akin to a Barnum & Bailey juggling act only makes it more so. I don’t know why NC-12 and NC-13 were not included on this poll, but I think the conventional wisdom is that neither Mel Watt nor Brad Miller have much to worry about this year.
All and all, I don’t see any of the Congressional districts in North Carolina switching parties this year. I think all of the incumbents are going to be retained. If Kissell loses, I’m afraid my friends at BlueNC will become suicidal.
Update: I mistakenly had the Fifth District Democratic candidate listed as Roy Cooper instead of Roy Carter. That has been corrected.
Citizens Against Government Waste is a taxpayer watchdog group that ranks our Congressmen on their effectiveness of responsibly managing our tax dollars and not spending it on frivolous pork barrell spending. Overall, the current Congress sucks the toejam off a homeless man’s foot in this regard, but our representatives from both North and South Carolina were a little better than most. A rating of 100% is a taxpayer hero and a rating of 0% is a government elected thief stealing your money in order to pander to his constituents at reelection time. Our two states received no 100s or zeros, but came close on both ends.
Our four Senators did a pretty good job. Both Burr and DeMint received an honorable mention by the CAGW, each scoring a 97%. Graham came in with an 87% and Dole with 73%. Overall, these scores are acceptable. The House? Not so much….
The Republicans did decently for the most part, which surprised me because southern Republicans typically are some of the worst abusers for earmarking in Congress. The Democrats all performed abysmally and Henry Brown, Robin Hayes, and Walter Jones could use some work themselves.
Residents of N.C.’s 4th Congressional District got a wonderful little gift in the mail the other day- a beautiful glossy campaign ad from quasi-socialist congressman David Price paid for at taxpayer expense.
It’s one of those annoying “Keeping in Touch” mailers that congressmen use to exalt themselves while ostensibly keeping in touch with the little guy, like you and me. These mailers, being official government business, are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Nice to see Congressional franking privileges being put to such good use.
Anyways, what really creams my wheats about this mailing is a section he called “Drilling Down the Rhetoric”, wherein he calls expanded drilling a “deeply flawed” idea. He opposes offshore Atlantic drilling because “it would be a dangerous gamble with our state’s important tourism and aquatic resources”. No, Congressman, a dangerous gamble is relying on oil from countries who hate us and who are in a militarily unstable part of the world. And I suggest you ask Brazil and Norway, two countries who have had great success with offshore drilling, how much of a detriment it is to their aquatic and tourism resources.
Price goes on to say that according to the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook, 2007, Atlantic and Pacific drilling “would have no significant impact on production or prices before 2030″. Well, I may not be an energy expert, but I call “BS” on Price and that study. Expanding the supply during a period of heavy demand will almost certainly bring prices down, and it won’t take 23 years to build a damn oil platform or to see price reductions.
Price concludes by demanding that those big mean evil oil companies drill in land that has already been set aside for them. Well that would be swell, except for that we don’t know if there’s any oil in them thar hills. We DO know, however, that there’s a veritable ocean of oil in ANWR, but boobs like Price won’t let drillers near it because we might hurt a caribou.
Price is a old hack who’s been in Congress for over 20 years- which is 20 years too long. I hope my fellow 4th District residents take a good look at this clown and at his opponent, B.J. Lawson, and decide that it’s time for a change.
He talked about his bill to boost the number of federal investigators of excessive oil speculation, saying, “Right now, we need more cops on the beat,” according to his prepared remarks, Barb Barrett reports
Why isn’t Etheridge, Price, and Miller back in Washington getting us some relief on gas prices and gas taxes?
Since Etheridge does not understand the concept of not drilling where there is no oil I will explain. Sir, you cannot get oil where there is none. I hope that was easy to understand.
How about cutting a lot of the excise taxes involving gas, diesel, propane and other forms of energy? That would put more money into our pockets and enable the workers and retirees of our great nation the ability to survive without sacrificing food or medicine that we need. But I do not see Democrats like the three above to do becuase it is too easy and takes away from the power of of the federal purse strings.
Voting 268 for and 155 against, the House on Thursday approved an amendment to HR 2642 that would appropriate $162.5 billion to pay for Iraq-Afghanistan war costs well into 2009.
Why did these Democrats vote against funding the troops? Their earlier attempts at passing a law to force a removal of troops from those two countries failed. I guess we know who supports the military and who doesn’t in North Carolina.
U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, will introduce legislation today to create a new Roosevelt Scholars program to help the federal government shore up its waning supply of scientists.
The Office of Personnel Management predicts that nearly a third of the government’s engineers, physicians, economists, mathematicians and scientists are close to retirement age, said Price spokesman Paul Cox.
Price’s bill, written with Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, would offer full tuition for three years of graduate school in exchange for three years of civil service in “mission-critical” areas.
Spending more Federal tax dollars to give some people free college isn’t addressing the cause of this problem. The cause is that the American public school system is an absolute joke. The government schools are turning out more and more stupid kids as each year goes by. They aren’t learning anything and that is why we are seeing less and less Americans entering into scientific fields and having to rely on an increasing number of foreigners.
If Congressman Price really wanted to solve the situation he’d tell the NEA to go to Hell and start supporting school choice.
U.S. Rep. David Price says he’s disappointed with President Bush’s remarks to the Israeli parliament on Thursday, just 24 hours after Price and about 50 other members of Congress urged Bush to promote diplomacy in his visit to the region this week.
“The president’s comments yesterday demonstrated that he is far more committed to political cheap shots than he is to actually pursuing peace in the Middle East,” Price said.
Really, Rep. Price? I’m disappointed that you managed to hold your tongue when Jimmy “The Appeaser” Carter blasted Pres. Bush and undermined American foreign policy by meeting with Hamas.
I’m disappointed that you haven’t criticized Nancy Pelosi for meeting with Syria’s Bashir Assad after the State Department asked her not to.
I’m disappointed that you serve alongside Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, who met with Saddam Hussein before the Iraq War and used the occasion to personally attack President Bush. There used to be a word for that- I think it was “treason”. Why is Jim McDermott still in Congress, Rep. Price?
I’m disappointed, Rep. Price, that even though Pres. Bush didn’t mention Sen. Obama by name, every Democrat with a tongue rushed to Obama’s defense. Guilty consciences, have you? If you’re going to be disappointed in anything, Rep. Price, it ought to be that you’re a long-standing member of a party that has abandoned any pretense of protecting this country so that they could spend 8 years launching real “cheap shots” at Pres. Bush. Shame on you.
Sen. Barack Obama has two more North Carolina superdelegates in his camp.
U.S. Reps. David Price of Chapel Hill and Mel Watt of Charlotte announced this afternoon that they are endorsing Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president.
U.S. Rep. David Price says earmarks have gotten a bad rap.
In a speech before the Cary Chamber of Commerce this morning, the Chapel Hill Democrat said the recent debate over Congressional earmarks has blown them out of proportion.
Price said the total amount of money spent on earmarked projects is about 1 percent of the federal budget. The bigger problems with spending are the Iraq war, Medicare and Social Security, he said.
Now what Price says is 100% true. Social Security and Medicare make up around 35% to 40% of Federal spending. Throw in the Iraq War and wow! But that doesn’t excuse the spending of wasteful earmarks. Bush just introduced a $3 trillion budget for next year. 1% of that is $30 billion. I don’t know about you, but that’s a hell of a lot of money to me and we could be putting that on our national debt since China and Saudi Arabia hold all the purse strings these days anyhow.
A professor of political science, Price argued that the U.S. Constitution clearly gives Congress “the power of the purse,” including the right to direct spending.
President Madison would disagree with you, Congressman: “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Adame, a diplomat who spent in Iraq, called them “guns for hire.”
Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, introduced legislation requiring more oversight of contractors after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in September.
And Neal, who is running against state Sen. Kay Hagan for the Democratic nomination, responded “Hell, no,” when asked whether the U.S. military should “outsource warfare.”
U.S. Rep. David Price was North Carolina’s top solo earmarker.
According to a database compiled by the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Chapel Hill Democrat was singlehandedly responsible for $24.3 million in earmarks in this year’s spending bills.
This is obscene. The amount of earmarks are increasing year after year and getting completely out of hand. There are some members of the house whose solo earmarks exceeded $100 million this year. This is our money and it should stay in our pockets. We can spend our own money better than some greedy politician using it to buy votes for their reelection.
Cho, former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, sought to portray himself as a mainstream conservative and Lawson as a libertarian who follows the same creed as GOP presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.
“It’s going to take a true Republican to beat David Price, not a libertarian quasi-Republican,” Cho said. “I call him ‘Ron Paul Jr.’ because that’s what he is.”
Lawson, a businessman who founded and later sold a medical software company, didn’t exactly run away from the characterization. He said Cho has no real strategy for defeating Price, and argued the GOP has to change its approach to appeal to middle-of-road voters.
“My strategy is all about building bridges,” Lawson said. “We need to stop dividing the country against itself.”
The issues dividing the two candidates were plain, most often when they addressed foreign policy.
Lawson made it clear he’s no supporter of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, or of its approach to post-9/11 domestic security.
Both, he said, posit a “state of war that has no criteria for success and frankly will never end.”
Americans, he added, “tired of the same old message,” “tired of living in fear” and believe they don’t “have to sacrifice liberty and freedom,” he said. Moreover, “the idea that we can police the world for Germany and South Korea at no cost to them and all the cost to us [is], frankly, unsustainable.”
I agree with Lawson. We are slowly giving up our freedoms in the name of supposed security. How much more will continue to erode under the guise of keeping us safe? He is also correct about the U.S. being the world police. We cannot financially afford to continue bearing the burden of the Monroe Doctrine. It’s time we started spending more of our time and resources on our own people instead of the rest of the world who quite frankly isn’t very grateful for it.
DURHAM — Congressional hopefuls B.J. Lawson of Cary and Augustus Cho of Chapel Hill will debate at Wednesday’s All Interested Republicans meeting at the Hope Valley Country Club.
The meeting begins with lunch at 11:30 a.m. Reservations are required. Call (919) 519-0761 to reserve a place.
Lawson and Cho hope to challenge for the Fourth District seat held by Democrat David Price of Chapel Hill.
Orange County Republican Chairman, Augustus Cho, has jumped into the 4th District Congressional race to challenge incumbent Democrat David Price for his seat in the November elections.
Cho’s campaign site is rather lacking on the issues; it may still be a work in progress, but as an immigrant himself he does go into great deal about national security and is a very strong candidate on enforcing our borders, supporting our border patrol guards unlike George Bush and his lackey Johnny Sutton, and denying illegal aliens incentives to remain here. For this he gets a thumbs up for me, but I would need to know a lot more about his positions on many other issues to make an educated analysis as to whether or not he would be an acceptable alternative to price.
Regardless, this is a very Democratic district and I don’t expect to see a change here after the election, although Congressman Price was defeated once before by Republican Fred Heineman in 1994. Price rechallenged him in 1996 and won the seat back.
A flurry of unsafe-toy recalls in past months has Congress considering legislation to revamp the regulatory agency in charge of enforcing toy safety.
Congressman David Price, a Democrat who represents part of the Triangle, spoke at the Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh today to garner support for the legislation, which aims to increase funding and staffing of the Consumer Protection Safety Commission. President Bush has said he would veto the bill if it passes a Democratic-controlled Congress.
More money for more useless government employees that won’t have a single impact on this “problem” whatsoever. Further expansion of the Washington leviathan is not needed.
U.S. Rep. David Price will lead a group of House members on a trip to Colombia this week to work on strengthening that country’s government.
The Colombian Congress is one of 12 legislatures worldwide that have partnered with the House Democracy Assistance Commission, of which Price is chair.
The House delegation will meet with President Alvaro Uribe and members of the Colombian Congress, as well as leaders of human rights and labor organizations. They will discuss legislative topics such as the process of writing bills, executive oversight and budget analysis.
