EDITORIAL
Headlines all across the nation exploded today with criticism leveled at Mitch McConnell for his role in the "shutdown" negotiations particularly the expansion of funding for a years old dam project on the Ohio River inserted in the late night bill and approved by a wide margin of 81-18 in the Senate 285-144 in the House.
Calling the funding increase the "Kentucky Kickback" and other equally ugly things blogs, newspapers and commentators from across the political spectrum are attacking Mitch, claiming that he failed to hold the line against the democrats and that he got a little pork for Kentucky as a payoff for surrender. Have people lost all perspective on politics and reality?
First of all, as Mitch correctly pointed out, if you have questions about the dam funding, ask Diane Feinstein and Lamar Alexander the chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate energy and water subcommittee, respectively. As reported by the Courier Journal:
Alexander said in a statement to Buzzfeed that the provision was required to safeguard $160 million in Army Corps of Engineers contracts for the dam. Alexander said he and Feinstein asked for the provision.
“It has already been approved this year by the House and Senate,” Alexander said.
The Olmsted project is one of the largest construction projects in the country, considered essential but way over budget.
Let's get this straight. The TEA party bunch cries all over the place that they would like a limited government that does little more than provide a strong military, and builds interstate highways, bridges and dams. A major construction project in one of the busiest corridors of commerce in the nation is sorely in need of replacement before the antiquated lock and dam system that has been outdated since 1988 fails completely. The Senate waterways committee chaired by a democrat inserts a funding increase for a project which is already underway into the CR bill and McConnell is criticized for not stopping it?
The bill passed with 81 votes for cripesake! How was he going to stop that?
And if the continued funding of a project which is under way already was necessary because of years of delays and funding uncertainties, who in their right mind would abandon it? What the hell is wrong with you people?!
And let's get one more thing straight. Even if Kentucky benefits from this funding, since when is a Senator NOT supposed to help his state? Are you people dropping acid or something?
Look, the whole shutdown fiasco was a cesspool, but ask yourself. Do you think Alison Lundergan Grimes or Matt Bevin could swim out of a cesspool with the kind of pearls in their teeth that McConnell got for Kentucky? I mean, if the entire fight was about to go down to defeat it is a good thing to have a guy like McConnell up there helping Kentucky isn't it, considering that the democrats are in the majority?
Criticism of McConnell is mind boggling. In fact the entire world of politics in Washington is like a brain eating amoeba, the longer it goes untreated the more we get close to a world of Idiocracy.
Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie and the others, get over yourself. You didn't accomplish anything except get airtime for yourselves, disrupt the nation, and show once again how totally ineffective you are.
And those of you who continue to listen to those guys and jump on the "bash McConnell" band wagon at their invitation, let me suggest that this is going to be a very short ride. Eventually the adults will take the keys away.
Until the GOP wins the White House and the Senate we need strong people in Washington who work FOR Kentucky, not some altruistic technicolor dreamworld image of a nation that has never, and will never be.
On Wednesday afternoon, Rand Paul defended Mitch McConnell in an interview with Terry Meiners on WHAS radio in Louisville.
"I would say Kentucky's very lucky to have Sen. McConnell," Paul said. "You need somebody who's willing to stand up for Kentucky."
I agree.
I am not a McConnell basher but I sure am not a fan either, I think he is not connected to constituents who are the backbone of this state..He has been in office way to long, he is, sad to say become entrenched in the ways of the rich and elite. No one in the Senate has the heart anymore to do the hard things..
Posted by: Glenda Cantwell | October 17, 2013 at 06:50 PM