Bill White raised more money from more contributors than Rick Perry.
From the White campaign.
Strong fundraising results show momentum building for Bill White
Over 16,000 contributors back successful businessman, popular mayor
HOUSTON -- At the end of the last filing period on June 30, more than 16,000 supporters had contributed to Bill White's campaign for governor, propelling White towards November with over $9 million cash on hand.
Grassroots support for White is strong. More than 75 percent of individual contributors gave $100 or less and over 11,700 new contributors joined the team this period.
"Texans from all backgrounds and political viewpoints see Bill White as someone who's in it for Texas. People in over 200 Texas counties have generously contributed to the campaign, and over 11,700 contributors this period were first-time donors," said Scott Atlas, Campaign Finance Chair. "There's a growing sense that Texans are ready for a new governor."
In the first two fundraising periods after entering the governor's race, White raised more dollars than Perry. Between late February and the end of June, contributors poured more than $7.4 million into White's campaign, with more than $16.6 million raised for his campaign for governor since December 4.
Bill White has raised more money from the grassroots while Rick Perry's pay to play politics and his overwhelming support for corporate and special interests over those of the people has yielded fewer contributions.
Rick Perry has circled his wagons around avoidance and accountability.
The Governor of Texas is on a 24/7 rampage to avoid questions and he refuses to be held accountable for his policies, agendas and decisions for the past decade.
Rick Perry must be growing rather desperate for the Governor seems to have engaged the services of PR spin doctors to coach him on how to deflect his Enron type of accounting schemes that delivered a $18 billion budget short fall. The Governor is also trying to flee from taking responsibility for his house of cards methodology for measuring the state's K-12 school performance.
The spin doctors' solution for cowardly and frightened career politicians?
Blame the coward's own evil doing on Washington, the federal government and the coward's opponents and critics for cowardly, reckless and irresponsible policies and decisions.
A bunch of debt? Rick Perry should know all about debt, junk science and voodoo math. And it has nothing to do with Washington, D.C. and the federal government.
This is very bad news for Texas. I find it uncanny that I learned about this sad state of affairs from outside of Texas on the Nation.com, of all places, on the very same day that Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle wrote an expose about the TEA. It seems that the rest of the U.S. has been aware of something that the public in Texas has not been informed about, at least until very recently.
From The Nation.com.
A recent report from Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center shows that the nation's graduation rate dropped for the second consecutive year, following about a decade of improvements. Three out of every 10 American public students will fail to finish high school, but in Texas that dropout rate increases to about 35 percent, according to the report.
Moreover, Dallas and Houston are named as two of 25 national "dropout epicenters" from whose high schools come one-fifth of all dropouts. Texas policymakers seem wholly unaware of this crisis, since the Texas Education Agency calculates the graduation and dropout rates in a manner that puts them at 88 and 12 percent, respectively. At schools like Robert E. Lee in Houston, where in 2008 the federal calculations placed the graduation rate somewhere in the thirties, those numbers seem almost comical.
It looks like Glenn Beck, a college drop out, has founded his very own university. On line, of course, and for profit, no doubt, complete with a chief member of the American Christian Taliban as a distinguished lecturer. The sole purpose of Beck U is to rewrite American history. Why does this sound so very familiar?
I wonder if the membership of the Texas Christian Taliban, aka the SBOE have lined up to enroll? Get yer credit card ready, members, for Beck U will not be free. By the way, not that it would matter to you folks, the "degree" you receive will be absolutely worthless. But go ahead folks, sign up while openings remain. Absolutely no prerequisites for admission are needed, except for timely tuition payments and fees of course.
More on demagoguery, right wing nuttery and Crazy & Greed Inc. below.
For BP has messed with Texas. Again. God must be very angry at Governor Rick Perry. Maybe when the Governor blamed God for BP's disaster and then later, after Perry had stolen from Texas school children, he brought the wrath of heaven to Texas.
This past weekend tarballs washed up in Galveston on the Bolivar Peninsula at Crystal Beach.
About a dozen tar balls that washed ashore on Crystal Beach were identified Monday as oil from the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the first evidence that oil from the spill has reached the Texas coastline.
But it was unclear whether the oil from the blowout dropped off a passing ship or drifted nearly 400 miles.
Laboratory tests showed that the tar balls came from the BP Macondo well that blew out April 20, killing 11 crew members on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, said Coast Guard Cpt. Marcus Woodring, commander of the Houston-Galveston sector.
The handful of tar balls came ashore Saturday and a second wave amounting to about 5 gallons of oil was found Sunday scattered along 1½ miles of beach on eastern Galveston Island and Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula, Woodring said. Laboratory results on the oil discovered Sunday are expected today, Woodring said.
Will Governor Perry pray for a miracle or will he parrot RNC talking points and blame the spill on the Obama Administration? Will he rail against the feds while gladly stuffing U.S. clean up funds into the state coffer? Will the Governor use federal money to actually clean up the spill or will he try to use fed bucks to cover his $18 billion budget shortfall? As we well know by now, Rick Perry excels at playing games with the evil doing federal government taxpayer dollars that he hates but loves to spend.
I wonder what Rick Perry and his Party of Partisan Misery will do to prevent future oil disasters in the U.S.?
An article in the Houston Chronicle reveals that Rick Perry did not use federal stimulus money targeted to schools to augment their budgets, as required.
The federal dollars were intended specially for schools. The funding was to have given Texas a means by which it could enhance and strengthen the educational outcomes for students. The federal government did not hand out the people's money to Texas for the governor to do whatever he wants with it. Of all people the governor should know that federal funding always includes specific requirements and guidelines, compliance is mandatory as is accountability. In this case the federal government made it clear that states could not replace what they normally distribute to schools with federal money.
Rick Perry must think the rules do not apply to him especially when they are made by a big bad federal government that will actually hold him accountable for how the governor spends the people's money.
As we can imagine, the ever arrogant Rick Perry thumbed his nose at Texas school children, their teachers and the U.S. taxpayers while stuffing the U.S. people's money into his state coffer. The Governor of a state in which the schools rank second to the bottom of the pile nationwide cut back on what Texas normally gives to its schools. Instead of receiving extra resources and educational opportunities Texas schools got the same stingy state funding.
Democrats charge that while Perry officially accepted the money from Washington, he simultaneously slashed the state's contributions to the education budget, allowing the state to essentially pocket the federal dollars without increasing school aid.
"Instead of a historic boost in local school support, our schoolchildren were left no better off," Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, said. "Three billion dollars (in federal money) made no difference to our local schools."
Rick Perry has stooped to such a low level that he will actually steal from Texas school children.
Our esteemed Texas Republican lawmakers, especially U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, seem to have their lips perpetually super glued to the derrieres of BP and big oil.
I guess our Texas Republican lawmakers are completely incapable of thinking outside of any box that is unrelated to stuffing bucks into their personal campaign coffers.
As we all know by now, Governor Rick Perry has also super glued his lips to the derrieres of any big money that moves in his direction.
Meanwhile, back in a reality residing outside of the Texas GOP world of groveling and self serving pimpitude to corporate interests, there are grave and challenging issues that must be dealt with on national, state and local levels.
After serving 10 years as the state's governor Rick Perry's anti-government, tax loathing, low educational achievement standards, building prisons while gutting schools crusade has yielded an unprecedented number of high school dropouts and an increasing pool of under-educated, unskilled workers. The rate of poverty has also increased over the past decade. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle a demographer at Rice University is truly frightened for the future of Texas.
The demographer who warned a decade ago about Texas' unhappy mix of dismal education achievement and high poverty is more concerned than ever. Actually, he's frightened.
Also getting restless are growing numbers of Texas business executives. Some don't see much leadership from politicians or the private sector in attacking the trend line that demographer Steve Murdock says will result in three of every 10 workers not having a high school education by 2040.
"I don't see business rearing up, and I sure don't see the state Legislature, with an $18 billion problem, saying, 'Man, we really need to muscle this thing up.' I think the thing that's going to change it is going to be another lawsuit," said Jack Lowe, chairman of Dallas-based TDI Industries and a board member of the Texas Business and Education Coalition.
The pattern of an increasing pool of low-income workers and high drop out rates in the high schools has us fast tracked to third world country status. This is what happens when our elected lawmakers believe they are lobbyists that serve corporate interests. The well-being of the people and the best possible educational and economic outcomes for the state never appear on their radar screens.
It looks like even some hardcore Republican loyalists are as fed up with Governor Perry as we are.
According to reporter Joe Holley of the Houston Chronicle stalwart Republicans say they support Bill White.
When his candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, fell to Gov. Rick Perry, he switched his support to Democrat Bill White.
Madden is one of a number of former Hutchison supporters who have crossed parties to support the former Houston mayor, including Houstonians Matt Simmons, CEO of Simmons & Co. International, and James Flores, CEO of Plains Exploration & Production Co.
It won't be a cakewalk to bring life long Republican loyalists over to our side but if any Democrat can do it, Bill White is the man.
I would like to remind the drill, baby, drill and deregulate, baby, deregulate crew and the Texas Republican whiny boy politicians that is there is a reason why we blame Hitler for World War II.
The Republican Party and its decades long held belief in an unrestrained free market ideology and its crusade to deregulate all federal oversight agencies holds the lion's share of responsibility for the present devastation of the economies of the Gulf region. The economic carnage, thanks to reckless and unfettered deep drilling oil practices, include the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.
Maybe the Texas Republican imperative to drill, baby, drill was not such a good idea after all.
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson,(R),top aide to former Secretary of State, Colin Powell (R), squarely laid the BP oil disaster at the feet of Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration.
Col. Wilkerson must be the only Republican left in the GOP who will take ownership of and responsibility for the actions and/or inaction of his irresponsible and reckless party.
The Texas GOP held its convention in Dallas on Friday and as we suspected, the Party continues to be pathetically bereft of fresh ideas and viable and concrete solutions for the challenges that face the state. Rick Perry beat on the same tiresome, unproductive and worn out drums of anti-Washington everything, anti-tax, anti-immigration and pro-states rights rhetoric. The tea party secessionist faction continued to call for secession. It seems that states rights and secession are the only concepts that Republicans are for. The tea party wing of the GOP showed up in full force with all of its John Birch paraphernalia, too. Lovely. What viable solutions do Birchers have to offer other than burning everyone who does not agree with them at the stake?
The conservative wing of the GOP demands a new era of fiscal responsibility, according to the attendees. Aside from uttering the words "fiscal" "conservative" and "responsibility" no one said how Rick Perry should make up his $18 billion budget shortfall. How will he do it? Apparently no one brought it up and on one asked. What are Perry's plans to make up the shortfall? Does he have one at all? Maybe he intends to rob a few banks to deal with the issue. Perry would likely rather do that instead of increasing taxes, as long as someone else is doing the actual robbing of course.
Maybe Rick Perry's highly paid PR strategists and spin doctors forgot to include a major talking point in his fired up hate talk rhetoric. Like, people need well paying jobs and benefits.
How will Rick Perry create new jobs in Texas? How will Governor Rick Perry cover his $18 billion budget shortfall?
Why do crickets continue to chirp all of the time in Rick Perry's Texas?
Rick Perry must be running scared and desperate for he is in his Rovian full scorched earth politics mode. Perry had no problem stooping into the gutter in order to burn, torch and demonize his primary opponents Debra Medina and Kay Bailey Hutchison. Now, a more desperate and ethically compromised Perry has shown his willingness to step into the sewer to save his sorry political butt.
Rick Perry's hired and highly paid political guns have its targets focused on Bill White.
There are no lowest of lows where Rick Perry is concerned.
According to the Houston Chronicle Governor Perry, a life long politician is obviously terrified of losing an election. I mean, what else would Rick do if he can't live off taxpayer bucks and political donations?
A terrified Rick Perry called in all of his horses and all of Perry's tools to manufacture a scandal to save King Perry's butt.
A desperate and broken king Perry accused Bill White of profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 while White served Houston's mayor.
Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday accused Democrat Bill White of engaging in profiteering during Hurricane Rita in 2005 by directing a local water authority to award a contract to a company to which he had financial ties.
What a shocker. Not. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle today 37 of the 64 judges in the Gulf region from Texas to Florida, have financial ties to big oil and gas.
Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean - and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year.
As many of us already know, big oil and the energy industry has been buying politicians and judges for decades.
Those three companies are named as defendants in virtually all of the 150-plus lawsuits seeking damages, mainly for economic losses in the fishing, seafood, tourism and related industries, that have been filed over the growing oil spill since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Attorneys for the companies and those suing them are pushing for consolidation of the cases in one court, with BP recommending Texas and others advocating for Louisiana and other states.
BP's devastating oil gusher has certainly opened a pandora's box of a systemic and pervasive lax regulation and oversight, little, if any accountability, crony capitalism, mind boggling corruption and criminal negligence that has pervaded our culture for decades. To learn that judges are part of this toxic anti-American brew should serve as a wake up call to all.
In Texas it takes a law student to unravel some of Rick Perry's tax shenanigans.
According to an article in the Houston Chronicle yesterday, a Baylor law student argues that Perry's business margin tax enacted in 2006 after the governor had called a special session to pass it, is unconstitutional.
Perry apparently needed to enact the business tax in order to be able to lower school property taxes. The business tax was also to replace a so-called "stupid tax."
The Governor sure seems to have been up to a lot of tax gaming during the 2006 session. Perry implemented one tax to replace another in order to lower another? This sounds like a silly season called elections if you ask me.
Chronicle journalist Rick Casey reports:
Its 25 single-spaced pages can be boiled down to this: The new business tax enacted in 2006 during a special session called by Gov. Rick Perry so that he could lower school property taxes violates the Texas Constitution.
The tax replaced the old franchise tax on corporations which had come to be called the "stupid tax" because so many corporations had avoided paying it by technically placing themselves under partnerships.
As far as the "stupid" tax is concerned what is really stupid, in my view, is the lawmakers and/or lobbyists who enabled such a huge gaping loophole for businesses to form instant partnerships, no questions asked.
I think Rick Perry has spent far too much time palling around with the likes of Sarah Palin and the teabagger folks. After spending much of last summer hanging out with right wing fundamentalists and extremists who want to form their own armed militias and who are known for making stuff up and pulling facts out of their butts, Rick Perry has apparently forgotten how to add and subtract.
As Lisa Falkenberg of the Houston Chronicle writes, some whoppers are just too huge to ignore, even during the silly season of campaigning.
After all, similar to drinking while driving, speaking while stumping has been associated with any number of side-effects, from impaired judgment to short-term memory loss to feelings of grandiosity.
Campaign rhetoric is usually judged in this context. But, occasionally, the whopper spewed from the candidate's lips, or those of a spokesman, is so big, it can't be ignored. And it might be dangerous to do so.
Such was the case last week with Gov. Rick Perry and his spokesman, who claimed, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, that Texas' dropout problem isn't that big of a deal.
Rick Perry claims that our school's drop out is a mere 10%. Oh were it so.
Of course we evil doing liberals know for absolute certain that Republicans would never, ever, hell would have to freeze over,crack down on a scam that rips off people but is good for business.
Houston's conservative readers in Houston did not want to know about the totally screwed temporary but really permanent employees as reported by Rick Casey. With all due respect to Casey, he is not exactly a flaming liberal pinko communist progressive.
Houston area conservatives tore into Casey because they did not like his article.
In response to a comment I had posted on Mr. Casey's online article, a conservative responded with the following.
....as far as jobs and benefits, the unemployment rate has increased dramatically since the Demos took charge of both houses of Congress and Presidency. this is because evil white old white guys, the Chinese who hold our debt and many others are scared of the Demos reckless spending that will soon bankrupt the country.
Hint: This dude watches FOX and listens to Rush.
I wonder where this guy was when then Vice President Dick Cheney said deficits didn't matter and he and Bush stuck an unnecessary war and tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans at the same time, putting all on our national credit card? All of a sudden Republicans are all but hysterical over the deficit. And yet when the Senate introduced a bill proposing a deficit reduction commission 7 Republicans who supported it voted NO when the President said it was a good idea. Talk about political bi-polar disorderly dysfunction syndrome. What is wrong with them?
The truth of the matter is, Democrats are really good at cleaning up Republican made messes. We know what it takes to rebuild a devastated economy and we know how to catch terrorist leaders. The Obama Administration has caught more Taliban terrorist leaders, by the way, in one month than the Bush Administration caught in 6 years. And U.S. troops seized a Taliban headquarters in Afghanistan today. Poor Dick Cheney must have fainted when he learned about this. He is running out of stones to throw at President Obama. So much for Democrats being weak on national security.
It seems that we voters need to hold or obtain doctorate degrees in psychology or medical degrees in psychiatry to understand the twisted and dysfunctional behavior emanating from our fearless Republican leaders in Washington and Austin.
Both Senators Cornyn and Hutchison have trashed the stimulus bill (The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act,) railing against its waste and its abysmal failure to deliver cash infusions to our state while they extol the bill's virtues at the very same time. Maybe a little bird told the Senators that the recovery act they've been attacking for all kinds of reasons is actually a success.
To further complicate the Senators' stand on the stimulus package that both hate but love, John Cornyn has begged the EPA to deliver bucks for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston.
Kay Bailey Hutchison praised the Port of Houston for its clean air strategy. Residents of the area may have a different definition of "clean air."
The Wall St. Journal obtained letters written by stimulus bashing Republicans who solicited federal recovery money for their states. When the funding is awarded the Republicans that hate the stimulus bill in Washington take credit for it in their home districts.
The Wall St. Journal included letters submitted by Senators Cornyn and Hutchison.
The Environmental Protection Agency received two letters from Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asking for consideration of grants for clean diesel projects in San Antonio and Houston. Mr. Cornyn is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
One of the letters was signed jointly with Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, also of Texas. The letter said that the Port of Houston Authority "has informed me of the positive impact this grant will have in the region by serving as a foundation for PHA's Clean Air Strategy Plan, creating jobs, and significantly reducing diesel emissions." Houston received millions of dollars in diesel funding.
Meanwhile, outside the Washington D.C. beltway bubble, our revered Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a fatwa against the EPA.
Gov. Rick Perry announced today Texas would legally challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming endanger the public's health and welfare.
The federal agency issued the finding in December in an attempt to regulate the heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act.
Texas is the nation's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, releasing enough each year that the state would rank seventh worldwide if it were a country.
The Senators and Rick Perry's behavior would be downright comical and would make great material for a new series of Homer Simpson cartoons or a Three Stooges redux except that the consequences of their hypocritical stupidity is downright dangerous to our financial security.
With this kind of leadership in power, I think we can safely assume
Texas we have a huge problem. If we don't fix it we are screwed.
Now is the time to throw at least one of the bums out. By 2014 we may have a modicum of responsible and sane leadership in both Austin and Washington.
It won't happen unless we Vote, Baby, Vote.
The polls opened yesterday.
Will the Gentleman from News Corp, the Distinguished Senator from Saudi Arabia please yield to the Gentle Lady from Citigroup, the Senator from Russia? The Gentleman from Goldman Sachs, the Distinguished Senator from the great land of Dubai may have ten minutes.
By the way, Prince Al-Waleed, a grandson of the King of Saudi Arabia and the largest individual shareholder in Citigroup and second biggest shareholder in News Corp (Murdock's FOX "News") doesn't like Obama's tax on the banks. Nor does he think much of health care reform or the movie Avatar. Of course Saudi Arabia, a highly repressive country, is one comprised of the very rich and the very poor. For every Prince Al-Waleed there are thousands of impoverished Saudis. The King may wish to ask himself why terrorism has become a successful means of employment in his country.
Apparently Senator John Cornyn and Rick Perry have absolutely no problem with the recent SOTUS decision in which corporations can contribute unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. In an interview with FOX "News" yesterday, Senator Cornyn said everyone is making too big a deal about this decision.
WALLACE: And finally - and we've only got about 30 seconds left - what's the practical effect of the Supreme Court ruling this week saying that corporations can now openly support and spend money, openly supporting or opposing candidates? Do you expect a rush of corporate cash into the campaign?
CORNYN: No, I don't. I think it's been overstated, the impact. Frankly, there's been an explosion of money into federal races for public office since - well, in the last 10 years, since campaign finance reform.
It hadn't done anything to stop the flow of money in. What it's done is make it less transparent and less accountable. President Obama spent more money in his campaign in 2008 than Senator Kerry and President Bush did in 2004 combined.
So what we need is transparency. We need contemporaneous reporting on the Internet. I think that's the kind of accountability that we need.
WALLACE: Senator Cornyn, thank you. Thanks for coming in today. And it's always a pleasure to see you, sir.
CORNYN: Thanks, Chris.
Overstated? I guess the Senator forgot that most of our corporations are multi-national now and thereby include hundreds if not thousands of foreign shareholders who have a lot of financial clout. Foreign investors like Prince Al-Waleed could very likely donate unimaginable amounts of cash through the back door, i.e. through the armies of lobbying firms that are already crawling all over Washington D.C. In fact, lobbying firms will very likely now become the biggest employer in the Washington, D.C. area, after the federal government.
Senator Cornyn also needs to be reminded that President Obama's ability to raise extraordinary amounts of cash is in no small part due to an immensely effective and powerful electronic grass roots fund raising tool. Through this mechanism the Obama campaign could easily raise vasts amounts from tiny donations ranging from $5.00 to $50.00. There were no small number of "money bombs" raised over at Daily Kos when progressive bloggers would feel the need to show then candidate Obama support especially through the media circuses of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers. In fact, when progressive grass roots bloggers and activists would get fed up with media bias, John McCain or Sarah Palin we would implement electronic fund raising drives.
Well, I guess those days are over since the SCOTUS threw we little ol' grass roots activists and average Janes and Joes of America into a tank pervaded with with gigantic flesh eating sharks. Big John will tell us this is just fine and we should not worry.
I guess the Senator would love nothing better than to let Goldman-Sachs retaliate against President Obama's efforts to tax the banks, or for health insurance companies to crush the President in 2012 if he should sign the health care reform bill.
Imagine how many congressmen Goldman Sachs could make quake if it quietly let it be known it had decided to divert just 10 percent of the $16.2 billion in employee bonuses it has budgeted this year to retaliate against any of them who supported Obama's proposed reforms.
Gov. Rick Perry must be worried that the citizens of Texas are going to lose their minds and turn state government over to the Democrats.
This week on the campaign stump, he proposed two state constitutional amendments based on the notion that we can't afford democracy.
One is that any state tax increase would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
Functionally this is already the case in the Senate, where everything but voter ID bills needs a two-thirds majority, but apparently Perry is concerned because Texas two years ago elected an uncomfortable number of Democrats and tossed autocratic Speaker Tom Craddick in favor of a speaker who will actually work with said Democrats.
Maybe Perry has become a great admirer of California, where a two-thirds requirement for passing a budget led to the state paying its bills with IOUs while the Legislature bickered and showboated.
Casey is spot on where California's woes are concerned. The state requires a two-thirds majority in order to pass tax increases. Of course since Republicans have an unholy aversion to taxes it is all but impossible to implement tax increases. Consequently schools go without funding and teachers lose their jobs. Class sizes increase and the quality of education thereby decreases. College professors in the University of California system had to take 8% cuts in salaries. Tuition and fees have increased to the point that it is very difficult for working and middle class students to afford a four year college education. There is no money to fix roads and bridges. The state's infrastructure will take a serious nose dive.
The Associated Press, Houston's Channel 2 News and The Houston Chronicle reminded readers and viewers that the very same Republicans who oppose current health care reform had, in 2003, supported an expansion of Medicare. Unlike the Democrats today with HCR, Republicans in 2003 had no plan to pay for the Medicare expansion just like they had no plan to pay for the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy. All were charged to our, our childrens', our grandchildrens' and our great grandchildrens' credit cards.
This is certainly a new twist with the mainstream media given its tactic sympathy and support of the GOP over the years. As we know, since at least 9/11, the media has given pass after pass to George W. Bush and his irresponsible and devastating crusade in Iraq, his Administration's culture of corruption in Washington and the failure of the Department of Justice to meet some of its judicial responsibilities. The media failed to disclose that non-partisan federal agencies had been invaded by partisan hacks and had been turned into political arms for the RNC.
It is nice to see that the media has, hopefully, returned to the task of real reporting.
Democrats are troubled by the inconsistency of Republican lawmakers who approved a major Medicare expansion six years ago that has added tens of billions of dollars to federal deficits, but oppose current health overhaul plans.
All current GOP senators, including the 24 who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion, oppose the health care bill that's backed by President Barack Obama and most congressional Democrats.
The Democrats claim that their plan moving through Congress now will pay for itself with higher taxes and spending cuts and they cite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for support.
By contrast, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House in 2003, they overcame Democratic opposition to add a deficit-financed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The program will cost a half-trillion dollars over 10 years, or more by some estimates.
With no new taxes or spending offsets accompanying the Medicare drug program, the cost has been added to the federal debt.
That's right you so-called fiscal conservatives. Just shove more debt on the backs of middle class taxpayers.
The irresponsible Republicans rationalize their behavior in 2003 as DOH! We didn't know we would bust the nation's piggy bank so quickly. And, Vice President Dick Cheney assured us deficits don't matter because Ronald Reagan had said it was so.
Some Republicans say they don't believe the CBO's projections that the health care overhaul will pay for itself. As for their newfound worries about big government health expansions, they essentially say: That was then, this is now.
Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said those who see hypocrisy "can legitimately raise that issue." But he defended his positions in 2003 and now, saying the economy is in worse shape and Americans are more anxious.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said simply: "Dredging up history is not the way to move forward." She noted that she fought unsuccessfully to offset some of President George W. Bush's deep tax cuts at the time.
