Democrats in glass houses....
Common Sense and Wonder
Congressman Rahall is a Democrat.
(Don Surber-wvgazettemail.com)
Rahall slips in the freebie poll
My favorite congressman remains Nick Joe Rahall.
I like him because he is so ineffective, and is therefore less likely to do any harm to the American people through foolish legislation.
He is a millionaire representing one of the poorest districts in the nation, southern West Virginia.
And yet he loves to mooch.
He travels the globe on someone else’s dime in his pursuit of the freebie. He even went to Baghdad just before the Iraq war. Wow. Just like Sean Penn.
I am all for this globetrotting. Every congressman should travel. The more often Congress is out of Washington, the safer the Republic is.
But Rahall does not lead the league in privately funded trips.
Political Money Line listed him on Monday as 20th in the number of freebie trips taken between 2000 and 2005, inclusively.
By Wednesday, he had slipped to 22nd. What a letdown.
Is my favorite congressman slowing down with age? He was passed by such lightweights as Stephanie Tubbs Jones and James Clyburn.
The list of travel paid by lobbyists and other friends of Congress has an interesting pattern. Democrats dominate the list, holding the top 12 positions.
The way Democrats have been demonizing Tom DeLay of late, I figured DeLay would be one of the biggest mooches in Congress.
But he is way down at 119th in travel paid for by lobbyists and the like.
This surprised me. I thought DeLay was a frequent flier, especially after watching Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., blast the guy on “Meet the Press” on April 17.
“As I said, this is not a case of just peccadillos,” Frank said.
“We’re not talking about travel only, about, you know, the bed was too soft or the golf was too frequent. We’re talking about a whole approach to public policy, and we think that this illustrates this very distorted approach to public policy that we’ve seen.”
But it turns out that Frank likes to fly on someone else’s dime as well. He’s No. 5 on the most trips list — mainly travel paid by liberal groups who want him to speak on gay rights.
If that is OK, then trips by conservative lobbyists for speeches on conservative rights should be OK. Fair’s fair.
Frank also is the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. The American Bankers Association and the Consumer Data Industry Association also paid for some of his trips.
What was that about glass houses again?
But as I said, the nation is better off when Congress is closed for the season and congressmen and senators are hitting the slopes or chasing sweet young things on the sunny beaches of some banana republic.
Rahall needs to pack his bags and hit the airports again.
Heaven forbid he should stay in Washington and actually get a law passed — or do something for his Dogpatch district after 27 years in Congress.
Posted by Jerry Scharf
commonsensewonder.com |
