Tom Delay Insists Jobless Choose Unemployment
Back in 2007, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay explained the Republican emergency room health care plan to a British audience. "There's no one denied health care in America," he announced to laughter, "there are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America." Which makes Tom Delay the perfect choice to make the GOP's case that the jobless choose to be unemployed.
Delay's latest jaw-dropper came during his defense of the indefensible, Republican Senator Jim Bunning's one-man jihad to block the extension of unemployment benefits to over one million Americans. As he told a stunned Candy Crowley on CNN, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs."
CROWLEY: Congressman, that's a hard sell, isn't it?
DELAY: It's the truth.
CROWLEY: People are unemployed because they want to be?
DELAY: Well, it is the truth. and people in the real world know it. And they have friends and they know it. Sure, we ought to be helping people that are unemployed find a job, but we also have budget considerations that are incredibly important, especially now that Obama is spending monies that we don't have.
And when it came to Senator Bunning, Delay was effusive in his praise. "I think Bunning was brave in standing up there and taking it on by himself," Delay insisted, adding that, "Nothing would have happened if the Democrats had just paid for [the benefits]."
Of course, when Delay was the Hammer of the House, the Republican Party didn't pay for anything, whether it be the Treasury-draining Bush tax cuts, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
From the GOP leadership's strong-arm tactics and the administration's budgetary chicanery deployed to secure the bill's passage to the industry giveaways it offered, the dirty dealing behind the Medicare drug plan showcased typical Republican politics in action.
For starters, consider Tom Delay's unprecedented machinations on the House floor to round up the needed votes. As the New York Times recalled:
Under heavy pressure from President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, lawmakers backed the legislation by a vote of 220 to 215, sending it to the Senate, which is expected to act in the next few days. The vote, which ordinarily takes fifteen minutes to record, was kept open for an extraordinary three hours as Republicans struggled to switch votes and obtain a majority.
And what happened during those three hours was a new low, even for Tom Delay. As the Washington Post later reported, the House Ethics Committee later reprimanded Delay for trying to buy votes for the Medicare bill:
After a six-month investigation, the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith's son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22.
Then there's the matter of the Medicare bill's price tag. As I wrote five years ago "Medicare's Prescription for Failure":
A White House desperate for an election year win on Medicare deliberately misrepresented the program's costs in order to ensure passage. On December 8, 2003, President Bush rolled out a program he claimed would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Within two months, however, the White House notified Congress that the real price tag would approach $550 billion. When Medicare actuary Richard Foster sought to present the true price tag to Congress in late 2003, then agency chief Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. Fast forward two years and the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan now exceeds $720 billion for its 43 million beneficiaries.
But back when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, Tom Delay had no problem at all with deficit spending that dwarfed the Bunning imbroglio's $10 billion price tag. The Republican position then as now wasn't about preserving conservative principles, but instead perpetuating a GOP majority at all costs. As Delay defended his party's fiscal recklessness that November night:
"We must forget about ideological absolutes."
On more than one occasion, the man known as the Hammer compared himself to the carpenter, Jesus Christ. On the day of his booking in 2006, the indicted Delay said, "let people see Christ through me." Apparently, Delay never saw the parts about healing the sick and "blessed are the meek."
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