What follows is Congressional candidate Benjamin Lodmell’s response to incumbent Congressman Jo Bonner(AL-01-R). We might just have a race on our hands but Lodmell needs your support.
WHEN IS A JOKE NOT A JOKE?
Want to hear a bad joke? Bush’s man in Mobile, Jo Bonner, claims he has represented Alabama’s 1st Congressional District for going on six years. Well, if that’s a joke, the joke’s on us. Bonner hasn’t represented anything but the special interests that fill and re-fill his campaign war chest whenever voting season rolls around. Like now. But that’s only part of the joke. The joke really gets going when you read Jo’s year-end tout sheet of the Bush-Bonner gang’s accomplishments during the first session of the 110th Congress.
Believe it or not, Jo Bonner has the unmitigated gall to begin his year-end sermon from Mount Washington by saying, “Congress ended the year successfully.” To write that kind of drivel, Jo must be eating too many side orders of grits, and they’ve gone to his head! If this past year was so successful, Jo, why does the latest poll by George Washington University show that 61% of the likely voters in the next election disapprove of the job performance of the Republicans in Congress? I guess they haven’t read your year-end review.
Speaking of which, Jo, why don’t you try explaining how you and your ideologically-driven brethren have the audacity to take credit for getting “$70 billion in funding without strings for Iraq and Afghanistan” and “full funding of S-CHIP through the coming year”? You’ve got to be kidding; the Congress had no choice. The President vetoed so many prior bills on these two issues alone, he had to refill his pen with ink.
What you didn’t say about the “no strings” funding for our troops is that the American people still have no exit strategy for a war where are troops keep dying and we have no hope of winning. As for the S-CHIP legislation, what you, after repeated Presidential vetoes, accomplished, despite all the self-congratulations, was to deny healthcare coverage to 10 million uninsured children. Good going Jo. As for the energy bill you took credit for passing, nowhere in your commentary do you mention that you once again came to the aid of your oil and gas industry buddies by cutting out of the bill a roll back of $13.5 billion in tax breaks that could have been used to extend tax credits for wind, solar, and biomass power, as well as hybrid cars.
But Jo is right about one thing in his year-end self-promoting report. As he says, “American families are feeling the pinch of higher costs of living – record high gas prices, heating costs, health care costs, and education expenses.” He’s right about that. And if anyone believes he is really going to try to help working families cope with the tough economic times that are coming, the joke will be on them again.