When Gabby Giffords ran for Congress last fall, a common theme of her campaign was fiscal discipline. She said she would go to Washington and stop the out-of-control spending. Since arriving in Washington, however, Gabby’s oath to control spending has not only become hypocritical, it is a down right lie.
In her campaign she said, “I pledge that I will fight to restore these middle class tax cuts if elected to congress.” Yet one of the very first votes she cast as a member of the House (other than voting to elect ultra-leftist Nancy Pelosi Speaker) was to implement the largest tax increase in United States history. That hike totals $39,200,000,000 over the next 5 years, a sum is going to cost her own constituents an additional $2,701 each year in taxes.
In just her 8 months as a member of Congress, she has shown no regard to reforming the legislative earmark process. In fact, she has requested over $327,000,000 in earmarks alone making her the biggest pork barrel spender of any of the 8 Representatives and 2 Senators that Arizona has in Washington. Gabby is requesting more money in Congressional Pork that her counterpart Raul Grijalva in neighboring District 7, who has requested $178,000,000 in earmark projects. Grijalva was rated by National Journal in 2006 as the 3rd most liberal member of the House, yet Gabby still claims the title of fiscal conservative.
Recently Gabby was presented with the opportunity to support landmark legislation that would begin cutting off air to the earmark process. Gabby’s Republican colleague Jeff Flake introduced a measure that restricts states with bridges in need of repair from receiving transportation earmarks. This bill comes in the wake of the Twin Cities bridge collapse. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters joined Flake in support of this initiative, heavily criticizing pork spending related to the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge. Peters has noted that transportation earmarks go nowhere near roads or bridges, and instead are spent on projects for bike paths or hiking trails.
Yet Gabby, the so-called fiscal conservative is standing in strong opposition with John Murtha to Flake’s amendment saying that the pork needs to be kept in various spending measures.
But guess who Gabby has decided to point the finger of blame too on Congress’ fiscal mess? None other than the GOP. At the end of July, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer joined with a group of members from the Blue Dog Coalition (Gabby’s fraternity) releasing a short video attacking the GOP because Republicans have been critical of the amount of spending that has taken place since the Democrats took power in January. Gabby was one of the six Blue Dog members to join Hoyer in releasing this video.
“Over the last seven months, Democrats have begun to restore fiscal responsibility and sound the alarm on the fiscal tsunami that threatens to drown our nation in the not-too-distant future if we fail to act,” Hoyer said in a statement with the release of the video.
The video was released to You Tube at this URL, but conveniently enough, it has been removed by the user.
Gabby is quick to attack other for too much spending, but when it comes to her own fiscal irresponsibility she, nor any of the Blue Dogs have a thing to say about it. It is yet another of Gabby’s forgotten campaign pledges to the people of District 8.
Her oath to be a fiscal conservative has in just 8 short months become a lie.
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