Voting 'No' Is a Waste of Time

Hi, gang.  It's been a while since I've carried my pitchfork and torch and been screaming about an officeholder's vote, hasn't it?  Sadly, that time it's come to an end.  Only, it's not over just one vote this time; no it's more about an attitude.

I have been writing blog posts about a certain U.S. Congressman, John Culberson.  I relayed some of his votes on some Hurricane Sandy relief bills and the vote to fund Obamacare.  He and his staff had no idea I did this.  Well, then I got an invite for lunch with the congressman and other precinct chairs in his district.  I did attend, just to see what he had to say.  Nothing exciting or new, just more of the same.  With that said, I sent him an email in which I shared with him my personal displeasure over his votes and also revealed the blogs AND the link to my blog so he could see what I had written. I also asked him to call me so we could discuss.

So, next morning I get a phone call from...guess who on my cell phone?  If you guessed Chewbacca, you were wrong, sorry.  So, we had a nice little chat in which he 'enlightened' me.  Heh. When I raised questions about the Hurricane Sandy relief bills, he assured me that there was money in those bills allocated for the rebuilding of Section 8 housing in New Jersey.  Great, more entitlement spending.  He also said that the representative from New Jersey Rodney Felinghuysen, a man whom he trusts, assured him the money would go straight to the housing authority.  The Congressman also reminded me of how we here in Texas sometimes experience hurricanes and he hoped that the same representative from New Jersey would stand beside him and vote for relief for Texas.  Okay, I can agree with that portion of his statement.  What I can't agree with is the spending, and what it's going to be spent on.  Here is a portion of the text of that bill from FreedomWorks website.  How can you argue with this?

This amendment, sponsored by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ-11), would add another $33 billion to the Disaster Relief Act, bringing the total spending in the bill to over $50 billion. Although the bill is supposedly to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy, the better portion of this amendment funds unrelated programs such as community development block grants. The "emergency" spending is also not offset, meaning that it will add to the federal deficit. 

Congressman Culberson also tried to reassure me that the spending would be 'offset' in next years budget, because the budget would be cut.  Great, but if you don't cut SPENDING, then there is a problem!   Oh, and by the way, he couldn't cite any places where they had 'offset'. 

Moving along to the Continuing Resolution (C.R.) to fund Obamacare.  So, the true story is, that YES, there is Obamacare funding in the C.R.  Congressman Culberson said that funding was 'hard wired' into the bill and there was no way to separate it from the other funding that needed to be passed.  So, I asked him why Representative Louie Gohmert would have considered voting no on that same C.R.  His answer was that sometimes Louie doesn't know what Louie is doing.  He also followed that up by saying that voting 'no' is a waste of time.  Now, in all fairness, he could have meant on this particular C.R. or just in general.

If it's the latter, I'm furious.  Even if it isn't, I'm still furious.  Voting 'no' is a waste of time?  Since when?  Tell that to Senator Cruz and Senator Paul and Senator Lee.  I'm sorry, kids, but that spells defeat in my book.  That tells me you've given up.  That would be like me, as a mom, deciding that it was just too damn hard to tell my kids 'no' anymore.  Does that even make sense?  I was so astonished when I heard those words come across my phone.

So now what?  The primary is coming...you figure it out.