An Earmark By Any Other Name Is Still an Earmark

You've heard "trust but verify" from none other than Ronald Reagan, no doubt.  The Tea Party movement taught us to do that, and I hope you still are.  Especially in the case of John Culberson, my congressman.

Congressman Culberson has been the star of many a blog posts here on The Political Chicken, and I'm feeling the need to turn the spotlight on him once again.  Not because he's done anything NEW and egregious, but because of things he's STILL claiming to be.  If you visit his website, he touts himself as a Jeffersonian Republican, but anyone who's studied his voting record can dispute that fact.  Something that I did in a post titled, "Is John Culberson A Jeffersonian-Republican...Or Not?

Just like your favorite infomercial, but wait, there's more.  Not only do the votes I highlighted in the blog referenced above prove that he is NOT a Jeffersonian-Republican, the fact that he's been making efforts to bring back earmarks proves it even further.  Not only that, but when you take into account that Jefferson himself was against earmarks and addressed them in a letter he wrote to James Madison, it proves Culberson's claims as laughable.

In the letter, Jefferson writes of earmarks, "it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the members who can get the most money wasted in their state, and they will always get most who are meanest.  We have thought hitherto that the roads of a state could not be so well administered even by the state legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot. What will it be when a member of N.H. is to mark out a road for Georgia?"   Sounds familiar.

The fiscal watchdog organization, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is also, obviously, against the use of earmarks.  Their former director of government affairs Bill Christian had this to say, "For those who rely too heavily on the “Article I” argument (that Congress controls the power of the purse), this is an important distinction that cannot be repeated enough:  Yes, members of the House of Representatives are sent to Washington, D.C. to “represent” their various and diverse districts on issues of national importance; they were not, however, sent to the national capital to demonstrate how much more clever they might be, in manipulating the national treasury at the expense of their less senior and/or less powerful colleagues.  Surely, the Founding Fathers did not intend for the “power of the purse” to be used to “rob Peter to pay Paul.”.  CAGW also named Culberson their 'Porker of the Month' in their December 2016 issue.  

What makes this also very 'funny' is that Culberson is out there campaigning so darn hard for the earmarks to be reinstated all the while claiming to be a Jeffersonian Republican.  Culberson is campaigning for this effort using the Article 1 argument, which Bill Christian has said is another version of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul."  And while Culberson and those that want to return to earmarking funds for their districts say that doing so won't increase spending, it still increases the deficit!   

Another recent development in the effort to bring back earmarks is the potential threat that Hurricane Harvey is posing for the Texas Gulf Coast.  The Houston Chronicle reports in an article that now Congressman Culberson is working to use this potential crisis to his advantage to get earmarks returned, and he's got two local Democratic congressman on board; Al Green and Gene Green.  They offered their support, "when he proposed some loosening of the federal prohibition on earmarks."  Well, now isn't that surprising, that a Democrat would want to spend more of your tax dollars?  What was all of that talk about draining the swamp again?

Time for a Culberson Birthday Bash, No Time for a Town Hall During August Recess

Happy August recess, Congress!  You know it's that time of year again, Congress is on a 'break' from work, that time of year when they finally have a chance to spend time with their constituents and discuss their voting record.  Wait, what?  What that should read is that Congress will be coming home to fill their coffers with more campaign donations by doling out more empty promises.

That is sadly the case more often than not, and it is the case for my Congressman, John Culberson.  If you've been reading any of my posts over the past few years, you know I'm not shy when it comes to sharing Congressman Culberson's voting record, since I have done so several times.  Now, what has me most upset is so far I have yet to hear of a town hall meeting to be scheduled for his constituents.  What I did get was an invite to a birthday party...wait for it...for HIM.  It gets better, I promise.  In order to attend this birthday bash, as it's called, you have to PAY to get in.  Really?  We live in a bass ackward kind of country when you have to PAY to see your very own congresscritter.

It is supposed to be a really well attended event and it's held every year and we only have to pay $25 to get in.  I don't care!  I don't care how exciting the party might be, or how good the cake is (there's a Marie Antoinette joke in there somewhere, I just know it). There's something wrong with this picture.

I have reached out to his office twice now, once to him personally on his Twitter feed and once in an email to his assistant, to no avail.  Just today, however, I got an invitation to a Meet and Greet for the Congressman.  What do you think of when you hear the words 'Meet and Greet'?  Right, fundraiser.  You can draw whatever conclusion you like, but to me that says that you and I are not important enough to meet with unless we have some money to contribute.

So, what do we want?  A town hall!  When do we want it?  NOW!  Call his office and demand a town hall.  You can reach him at his Memorial Office here in Houston at 713-682-8828 or at culberson.house.gov and go to the contact form.

Lawmakers need to remember who they work for!  It's We The People who employ them, not the other way around.  Remind him who he represents and who he reports to!

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.

Versions of the Truth

I don't know about you, but I like for people to tell me the truth; the honest truth.  I don't want your version of the truth.  Ever since my last blog post about Representative John Culberson's voting record on some key spending bills called Just The Facts, Chicken!, my attention has been focused on him to see what he's going to do next; if he's going to reign in his spending habits, or continue to push us over the fiscal cliff.  Unfortunately, I don't have good news.

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, to be exact, there was a continuing resolution that was voted on by the House of Representatives called H.R. 933; a resolution that will fully fund Obamacare.  According to Yvonne Larsen, a contributing blogger for Big Jolly Politics, who states in her blog, All But One! that: "With the exception of Representative Louis Gohmert (TX-01), every single Republican from the Texas delegation of the U. S House of Representatives voted to fund Obamacare. They even broke their own rules to do it."  Huh.  Interesting.

So, I go to Representative Culberson's Facebook page and lo and behold there is a blog post by one of their staffers about that very CR, titled The Truth About Obamacare and Continuing Resolution.  They seemed to have been getting phone calls about why Congressman Culberson would have voted to fund Obamacare.  Heck, according to his legislative staffer, he'd already vote to repeal Obamacare something like thirty-four or thirty-five times!  So why not vote to fund it?  He'd kept one part of the promise to REPEAL it.  He never mentioned not funding it.

My next step in investigating this was to call his office directly.  I felt like there was something I was missing and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.  So here is in short the phone conversation I had with their staffer: She said that there were essentially 12 appropriations bills all combined into one bill. One of the agencies that was to be funded was the Labor and HHS which funds things like WIC and is the agency that funds Obamacare. They voted to fund all of these things together, so that's where the confusion comes in. She assured me that every year, these agencies have been funded at lower levels, therefore only leaving enough money to fund WIC and NOT Obamacare.  Okay, that may make sense, but this reason that they voted for it makes my blood boil.  They voted for it in part, from my understanding is  that if they had voted no that the bill wouldn't have gone anywhere in the Senate anyway.  SO WHAT?!?  Take a stand!  Vote 'no'!   

Yvonne Larsen raised another question after I shared this information with her.  Why were they in such a hurry to pass the bill?  They didn't even allow for the seventy-two hour wait time that they promised.  No, they were in such a hurry, they voted after the bill was only posted for forty-seven hours.  Sounds a little fishy to me.

On a side note, while having a conversation with this staffer, who was very helpful, by the way, I told her some things that I thought she needed to hear.  I let her know, nicely that Republicans are bad at messaging; that this information they posted about the CR was done in reaction to the response of the constituents, not as a proactive measure.  Then again, if we had known about it, we probably would have called and told him to vote no.  She assured me that they are very active on social media and do try to get their message out.  Culberson is known for his 'cut spending and reduce government waste' stance, so I asked her what have they eliminated.  She couldn't name any specific program or agency right off the top of her head.  Go figure.

Not to get preachy here, but the Bible says something about a person's word, ya know, when you give someone your 'word' that you are or aren't going to do something.  Above all, my brothers, do not swear--not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned-James 5:12.  Unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about the things you didn't mention that you might do or the things you didn't promise.  We usually just get some version of the truth.

Why I'm supporting Bill Tofte for U.S. Congress

Hello, friends!  It's The Political Chicken here!  I am somewhat new to the arena of politics and I'm coming out of my 'shell' of sorts.  I have recently discovered a few things about myself, and one of those things is that I love to write.  So, here I am, ready to share my opinion with the cyber-world which is already full of other opinions.  I mean, what's one more blog among millions of others, right?  I may not always write about politics, but it's May and in Texas, it's primary season, so, here we go.  

I am usually a chicken, I don't like to try new things, or for that matter, new representatives.  But, you know what they say, a sure sign of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.  Well, I'm tired of being insane!  We as a country are in debt way past our eyeballs, and the current Congress just seems to either not notice the debt or not care, and they continue to spend and regulate the American people into oblivion.  Well, I've had enough.  I know that lots of other regular folks have, too.  That brings me to discuss with you my choice for U.S. Congress in CD 7.  Bill Tofte, who is a business man and a constitutional Republican, has decided to throw his hat into the ring to be the new member of the House of Representatives to represent CD 7.  He is passionate about liberty and preserving our rights as Americans.  Bill is also a tea party guy.  He is taking his stand for the defense and restoration of the Constitution. He will never compromise his conservative principles. He will never weaken in the face of special interests or legislative power brokering. He will fight for freedom and liberty at all costs.   

Now, I'm a tea party gal.   I love the tea party movement and how it has empowered folks like myself, who normally wouldn't even think twice about politics to get involved.  I also love how it has evolved, too.  It's not about just waving signs and flags in the middle of town squares across America anymore.  It's about taking the people from the town squares and putting them into positions in state house races, school board races and mud board positions.  Come out from under that rock you've been living under and take a look around!  The stakes are higher now than they have ever been before and we NEED an involved citizenry!  We need folks like Bill Tofte and other conservative citizens to step up and run for offices like these.   

Bill is NOT a politician.  He has never run for office before.  So?  That's fine with me.  That just means that he is still honest and true to his word and hasn't been corrupted by the promise of power and money from some special interest groups.  Some people, who I consider part of the Republican 'good ole boy' network will say things like, we need someone with experience!  Bill doesn't have any experience!  Experience at what?  Racking up debt and mortgaging our children's and grand children's futures?  I don't think I want that kind of experience going back to Washington and representing me and my family.

They also may say things to me like, he's not the incumbent!  How dare you support a challenger to the incumbent!  You're so....so....anti-incumbent!  No, I'm not.  I just think that if we want better representation, we need to consider sending someone who isn't a 'good ole boy'.

Now, I realize that lots of politicians and candidates have attached the tea party moniker to their name to be accepted among tea party groups.  Well, honey, just like fried chicken, I can smell a phoney a mile away!  Rest assured, Bill Tofte is the real deal!  Vote for Bill Tofte, U.S. Congress 2012!