'I Would Fire Us All'
by Holden Watch
"I would fire us all,"
The quotation in the title of this post comes from a father, a Baptist deacon, a physician who has delivered more than 4000 babies and one who treats patients for free every Monday.
The statement was made to the Washington Post and published on Monday, November 10, 2009. It came from Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn.
It's not all he had to say.
From the Post:
"Coburn will use his time in Washington, he said, to sound the alarm on the ballooning deficit and to defeat as many bills as he can that would add to the national debt, including health-care reform.
"'The ground is shaking,' Coburn said on a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, warning that America was at a "rendezvous' moment, sagging under trillions in debt.
"It is Congress, he said, that is steering the American ship toward the disastrous shoals.
"'The country would be much better off if they kept us at home and not let us vote on anything.'
"He fears Congress will create more government programs that are wasteful, duplicative and easy to defraud. "
We agree with Senator Coburn.
We have seen our local representative Tim Holden vote for a massive trillion dollar stimulus bill, a budget resolution that assumes trillion dollar annual deficits for as far as the eye can see, an auto industry bailout that bailed out only his union paymasters, and appropriations bills for 2010 that increase spending for government bureaucracies by many times more than the rate of inflation on top of the stimulus bonuses they already received. We have seen Holden accept a 2009 pay increase even while seniors were denied cost of living adjustments on Social Security benefits. And we have seen him approve congressional staff pay increases averaging 5.5% while millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet.
What is there to add to that? We repeat Senator Coburn:
"It is Congress"Šthat is steering the American ship toward the disastrous shoals.
"'The country would be much better off if they kept us at home and not let us vote on anything.'
It's time to send Tim Holden home.