Brian Kanowsky

Last night, the House failed to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.  The bill needed a 2/3 majority to pass, but the final vote was 255-159. Indiana’s Congressional delegation split their votes along party lines: Carson, Donnelly, Ellsworth, Hill, and Visclosky voted for the bill, while Pence, Burton, and Buyer voted against it.

This piece of legislation was named after NYPD detective & 9/11 responder James Zadroga, who died at the age of 34 after developing a disease attributed to inhaling toxic chemicals. Zadroga dedicated 450 hours to helping with rescue and recovery efforts and Ground Zero. This bill would have provided medical care to responders and nearby residents who continue to suffer the after-effects of the terrorist attack.

Today, the GOP wants to talk about arcane rules of procedure or NY Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (justifiably) angry speech on the House floor. But that’s just because they don’t want to talk about this bill or their votes.

While the GOP, including our Hoosier delegation, has never hesitated to call these responders heroes in the past, this vote revealed how little they actually care about the sacrifice of those Americans. When it’s cheap to praise them, Reps. Pence, Burton, and Buyer are there. But when it comes to doing the right thing and standing by our heroes, they’re nowhere to be found.

The GOP offered a specific script to its members for opposing this bill, calling it a “new entitlement program,” a “tax increase”, and a special giveaway to “trial lawyers.” The one problem? The bill was entirely paid for by closing a tax loophole on foreign companies doing business in the US.

Steve Buyer serves on the committee that initially heard the bill, and he followed the GOP script on this bill to perfection. He offered a meaningless, redundant amendment to make doubly sure that no undocumented immigrants would be eligible to receive money under the fund – something already explicit in the text of the bill. Before voting against the bill in committee (PDF), Buyer criticized the bill as costing too much and being a parochial giveaway, saying:

"If we want to talk about New York City and Congress only acting for the benefit of New York City, that’s what this bill is about." (Source: NY Daily News)

I think it’s clear from the GOP’s vote what this what about: protecting tax loopholes for foreign companies instead of protecting the heroic Americans who responded to the 9/11 attacks.

Hoosier Representatives Andre Carson, Baron Hill, Brad Ellsworth, and Pete Visclosky all earned the gratitude of their fellow Hoosiers for voting to include the Murphy amendment in this year’s defense spending bill. As you probably know, the amendment instructs the Department of Defense to end the discriminatory policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the armed services, pending the outcome of a Pentagon review. Democrat Joe Donnelly joined with the remaining Republican delegation (Buyer, Pence, and Burton) to continue excluding gay and lesbian Americans from the service.

Here’s the House version of the amendment, which passed 234-194:

An amendment numbered 79 printed in House Report 111-498 to repeal Dont Ask Dont Tell only after: (1) receipt of the recommendations of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group on how to implement a repeal of DADT (due December 1, 2010) and (2) a certification by the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and President that repeal is first, consistent with military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion & recruiting, and second, that the DoD has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to implement its repeal. It would also include a 60 day period after certification before the repeal took effect.

And lest you think there’s some principle at play in the GOP opposition to the bill, here’s Steve Buyer ignoring all the evidence:

"It is very clear that homosexuality is incompatible with military service."

In contrast, Rep. Andre Carson released a statement that included this:

"Any patriotic American willing to give his or her life in defense of country should have that opportunity. And our troops should never be forced to lie about who they are in order to continue their service. Today’s vote will help ensure this kind of personal conflict is never an issue for the brave men and women in our military."

Last night, Congress decided that discriminating to please Steve Buyer wasn’t important enough to jeopardize our national security. And 5 Republicans defied GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence to support repeal.

The fight against DADT isn’t over, but this looks like the beginning of the end. The Senate still has to vote on the final bill – although the Armed Services Committee, including Indiana’s Senator Evan Byah, voted to repeal DADT.

But while the DADT vote is getting all the attention, I was intrigued by a vote on an amendment offered by Rep. Gutierrez, which would give the Secretary of Defense the power to review (and end) contracts with BP and their subsidiaries if they are deemed to no longer be a “responsible source”. Reps. Carson, Donnelly, Ellsworth, Hill voted for this amendment. The GOP delegation (joined by Rep. Visclosky) voted against giving the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon the power to review BP’s contracts.

The Guitierrez amendment passed easily (372-52), but it’s striking to me that all of the Hoosier delegation just last year voted to strip ACORN of any federal contracts despite a lack of any wrongdoing by the group.

So according to Mike Pence, Steve Buyer, and Dan Burton, helping families deal with the foreclosure crisis while being the victims of a badly-edited piece of manufactured conservative outrage means that you don’t deserve any federal contracts – even if a law to that effect might be unconstitutional. On the other hand, if you’re responsible for untold economic and environmental devastation and the deaths of 11 workers, we can’t even look into your contracts if the Defense Department deems that BP is no longer a responsible source.

These GOP congressmen are willing to risk our national security to eject service members from the military because they don’t like them, and they’re willing to risk our security to maintain contracts with a supplier that may be irresponsible. And just a few days before Memorial Day, no less.

These two votes, taken together, show a clear picture of our delegation’s priorities. In the cases of Pence, Buyer, and Burton, it’s clear they’re willing to put just about anything ahead of Hoosier troops, and they’re willing to put their ideology ahead of the Hoosier values of responsibility, fair play and equality under the law.

Hoosier Congressman Mike Pence took to the floor of the House of Representatives to demand an investigation into what happened on April 20, 2010. But he’s not interested in what caused the Deep Horizon oil rig to explode – he wants to know how he can blame the Obama administration:

“The American people deserve to know why the administration was slow to respond, why necessary equipment was not immediately on hand in the area and why the president did not fully deploy cabinet-level federal officials until he spoke at the White House on April 28th.”

I want to make one thing clear: Pence isn’t one of the handful of conservatives pushing the line that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is “Obama’s Katrina.” That would be too moderate for the former talk radio host. Instead, ”Pence asserted that Obama’s response time was slow compared to Bush’s response [to Hurricane Katrina] in 2005.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and other Democrats have condemned these kind of remarks – and Pence’s remarks specifically. But it turns out that Mike Pence’s wild allegations are too much for his fellow Republicans.

The most thorough response came from Fox News host Jane Skinner, who was armed with the facts and refused to let Karl Rove get away with baseless allegations about a delayed response from the Obama administration. She told Rove that “the national response team was activated and later that day the President convened a meeting in the Oval Office with all those involved.” (Watch the video of their exchange here.)

Minnesota’s Republican Governor (and 2012 Presidential hopeful) Tim Pawlenty told ABC News that the government “is responding to the best of their abilities.”

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly called the politicization of the spill “insane”, and asked, “What could they have done? Are you gonna put Obama in a dive suit and send him down there with a little rake?”

My favorite, though, was Pence’s former colleague in the House, Joe Scarborough, who called the oil spill-Katrina analogy “completely obscene”, and went on to say, “Anybody that draws that analogy is an idiot.”

I can’t find anything to argue with there.

(Video & text of Pence’s remarks below the cut.)

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On Sunday’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory interrupted Rep. Mike Pence’s rant about immigration to point out that it was Republicans who killed immigration reform in 2007. Seriously, how inane do your talking points have to be for Dancing Dave to knock you down?

Watch – the video gets good at about 1:40 (partial transcript below the cut):

(Unfortunately, this video cuts off Pence’s response. For a differently-edited clip, see the Crooks & Liars piece, “David Gregory Points Out Mike Pence’s Hypocrisy on Border Security”)

I’ve been very critical of Gregory since he took over Meet the Press – for example, I’ve knocked his refusal to fact-check guests, his obsession with polls and ignorance of policy, and his lack of any accountability for the flaws of his show – but this was decent journalism. Gregory was armed with the facts, and Pence had only his talking points.

Senate Republicans killed this bill. And they weren’t alone – a certain Hoosier Congressman named Mike Pence wrote a special comment for the Washington Times about why he opposed the “amnesty bill”:

I opposed the Senate immigration bill because of its core fallacy that millions of illegal immigrants could get right with the law without having to leave the country. For most Americans, and me, that is amnesty and I cannot support it. (Washington Times, June 10, 2007, page B3 – via Lexis search)

And even if the bill had gone through the Senate, Hoosier Republican Mark Souder was there to stop it in the House:

Mark Souder, the top Republican on the House sub-committee on border security, yesterday warned that the legislation would be "dead on arrival" in the House. (Financial Times, June 27, 2007, page 12 – via Lexis search)

But Gregory didn’t go far enough in debunking Pence’s tired talking points.

In both clips, Pence throws out a lot of numbers about “enforcement budgets”. But those numbers aren’t about enforcement or fences, they’re about the failed “virtual fence”. Media Matters debunked this a few days back, citing tons of statistics about the costs overruns and failed tests by this specific project.

Finally, Pence asserts that, “Phoenix, Arizona, is, is the kidnapping capital of the United State of America.” He neglects to point out, as Phoenix police do, that the victims of these kidnappings are almost always drug dealers or other crime figures. And, contrary to what Rep. Pence implies here, “ICE says the spike [in kidnappings] stems from tighter enforcement on the porous Arizona-Mexico border in recent years.”

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