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Georgia Congressional Delegation continues liberal voting trend

There have been very important votes in the U.S. House of Representatives this year. The results of the Georgia Delegation to Congress are going to be quite a surprise to those that believe Georgia is a conservative State. We have recorded the votes of our Congressional Delegation on four key votes:

• Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users - A historic and record breaking "pork" bill with over 5,000 "special projects" using the government's credit card with your name on it. Congress has just stiffed your grandchildren who will have to pay for this foolishness!
• National ID Act - establishes a defacto national id under the guise of being anti-immigration. Of course stopping illegal immigration at your local driver license office is about as practical as a screen door on a submarine. This Act is just more big government.
• Patriot Act extension - Lately Congress whines about the Supreme Court ignoring the Constitution, but never hesitates a minute to show they can ignore it also.
• CAFTA - The next step in a continuing series of Expensive Trade Agreements - continuing the erosion of our countries manufacturing base and will further the deterioration of our international trade position.

All four of these actions have a common theme. Continuing the abandonment of the Principles upon which our country was founded. Now one would think that as a State which is listed as conservative, Georgia's Congressional delegation would be mostly opposed to these type actions. But the results are exactly to the contrary as displayed in the following table:

Georgia's Congressional delegation has voted by almost a 2-1 margin in favor of bigger government and continuing the trend of abandoning our Founding Principles. Am absolutely dumbfounded by the GOP voting of 26 - 2 in favor of big government and special interest "pork."

The Transportation Bill vote borders on being disgusting. Billions of dollars of just plain ole "pork," at record breaking levels in a GOP controlled House of Representatives and Senate. Living in a rural area where most roads are still gravel it is disgusting to see our Congressional Representative supporting special interests instead of improving basic transportation of all Americans.

This is not a good trend. It is absolutely amazing that Cynthia McKinney and John Lewis have the better voting record on these key votes than the rest of Georgia's Congressional Delegation. It is even more amazing that John Linder, Lynn Westmoreland, Nathan Deal and Phil Gingrey have voted for ALL FOUR! So the next time you get mad at the Supreme Court for ignoring the Constitution, check the voting record of your Congressman, it will probably be just as bad or in some surprising cases even worse.

But lets go back a week or so and look at the arm twisting and methods being used by the Administration to secure votes for CAFTA (See: Vote On CAFTA coming soon):

At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans yesterday, Rep. Bill Thomas (Calif.) sidled up to the lectern and hinted that the leadership might look more favorably on lawmakers' requests for highways and bridges if they vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, according to three GOP witnesses.

The first  lesson to be learned from looking at these four key votes is that citizens need to watch what our elected officials do, not the lip service they pay in campaigns. The second is that we need more competition in elections to give a better choice. Georgia has one of the highest percentage of elections with only one candidate in November elections of any State in our country. Based upon these actual - recorded - votes it should be obvious to many - that in many elections Georgians are not getting the results that they expected when they voted.

How To Stay Informed

The following table gives the recorded votes for each Congressional Representative on these three votes. They will be included in our voter guide recommendation for the elections next year.
 

Note 1: This roll call was a vote to recommit the bill to committee, rather than a vote for passage and is considered the key vote. So on the roll call, a vote for the pork is listed as the NOES and a vote against the pork is listed as the AYES.

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