“'Freddie Mac [was] bailed out by the taxpayers,' Paul continued. 'So in a way, Newt, I think you probably got some of our taxpayers’ money.'The interesting thing is that both Paul and Bachmann are currently on the public payroll, and are campaigning for president rather than doing what one assumes is a fairly full-time job of being a congressional representative.
"Paul isn’t simply spreading that meme in debates. He’s also pushing the message in two attack videos his campaign has released online — both of which have scored links on the Drudge Report. The two versions of the first video — one is ad-length, the other longer — have together been viewed over 1 million times. On an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday, Paul commented that he wouldn’t 'have taken their money just for the fact that I think it’s an immoral thing.'
"Bachmann, too, has harshly criticized Gingrich for 'shilling' for Freddie Mac. 'Whether former speaker Gingrich made $300,000 or whether he made $2 million, the point is that he took money to influence senior Republicans to be favorable toward Fannie and Freddie,' Bachmann said in November."
The point was brought home to me when I was looking up Congressional votes. Here's a link to a roll call vote today. Scroll to the bottom and see whose names are listed as among the 6 (of 433) not voting. Both Rep. Paul and Bachmann are in the 1% of U. S. Representatives who didn't vote on a bill "To provide incentives for the creation of jobs, and for other purposes". Perhaps that's a 1% we can all be against.
Apparently, it's okay with Paul and Bachmann to take public funds for their quite well paid jobs though they aren't even showing up to vote let alone conduct the other public business a U.S. Representative is asked to do like oversight of government operations via committee assignments.
Not that this is unusual political behavior, but for Paul and Bachmann to call out Gingrich for receiving a publicly funded salary from a mismanaged federal entity all the while not showing up at their own publicly funded work place is at the least like the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe worse, if Gingrich actually did his job well.
2 comments:
This seems rather standard in D.C.
Granted, it's irritating - but I find myself more perturbed by the antics of our Golfer-in-Chief, and by the ramming through of a "health care bill" that nobody read.
Max, I agree with you 100% about the health care bill. Certainly passing bad legislation is worse than not showing up to vote.
Though in both instances members of Congress were not doing their job at least Paul and Bachmann are doing no harm. Actually, I like Perry's idea of a part-time Congress and am generally optimistic about Capitol Hill gridlock. :-)
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