He’s a RINO if there ever was one, and he needs to be replaced by a real conservative…
Returning an Obscure Congressman to Permanent Obscurity
He was elected in 2000, and is serving in his 6th term in Congress.
He is pathetic on education issues and school choice reforms in particular. He voted in favor of No Child Left Behind, and earlier this year, was one of only 4 Republicans to oppose reinstating opportunity scholarships for poor children in D.C.
He is a restrictor of free speech. He supported McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform,” along with 527 reform a few years later. He even opposed a bipartisan bill to ensure that campaign finance laws would not apply to bloggers.
He is a defender of seemingly every liberal spending program, including: the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Amtrak, Headstart, Americorps, the National School Lunch Program, the Legal Services Corporation, etc. He is serial reauthorizer of farm subsidies, highway subsidies, and energy subsidies.
He is profoundly unserious about cutting spending. He voted to earmark funds for Kentucky’s tourism industry, the DC metro system, a National Mule and Packers Museum, researching the genetic makeup of grapes, the Bronx Council of Arts, etc. He consistently votes against the conservative budgets offered by the Republican Study Committee (with one exception, which must have been a mistake). He opposed comprehensive reforms to the budget and spending process designed to limit government rather than expand it, probably because they were opposed vigorously by the appropriators.
He voted for the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the expansion of SCHIP, and voted to block the Bush Administration from controlling Medicaid spending. And in this age where every Republican tries to outdo each other on repeal of Obamacare, he voted to expand one of its grant programs earlier this year.
He is a regulator. He voted for Sarbanes Oxley and led the effort for higher CAFÉ standards on cars and trucks. He voted to over regulate credit card companies so that they increase costs on consumers. And before it was fashionable to Drill Baby Drill, he opposed lifting the moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.
He was one of only three Republicans who voted for all of “Six in 06” priority bills of the new Democrat Majority in 2007 (increasing the minimum wage, adding price controls in Medicare, Democrat PAYGO, etc.).
And of course, he voted to massively increase the nation’s debt limit by a trillion dollars this past summer with virtually nothing in exchange for it.
He currently has a 52% on Heritage Action’s scorecard.
He represents a district that is currently a +12 GOP district. George W. Bush and John McCain won the district convincingly, as did Tom Corbett in 2010. (To give you a sense for how conservative that is, Jeff Flake’s district is +15 GOP, and Mike Pence’s district is +10 GOP.)
He represents Pennsylvania’s 19th district, and he needs to be primaried.
