He’d like you to believe that, anyway.
In the past week Congressman Phil Roe voted
1 To cut funding for the WIC food program (HR2112)
2 To cut aid to community food banks (HR 2112)
3 To increase crop subsidies (HR 2112)
4 To cut funding to the FDA, spending less money on food safety (HR 2112)
5 To delay for at least another year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulation of derivatives trades on Wall Street – The CFTC regulations would be designed to prevent the sort of greed-driven trading that caused the need for bailouts on Wall Street and led to the current four-year-old financial crisis that we are dealing with today. (HR 2112)
6 To defeat a Democratic proposal to add $20 million in funding to prevent suicide by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. (HR 2055)
Item 3 is a handout to corporate farmers and an invitation to defraud the taxpayers. What does Rep. Bachman grow on her subsidized family farm? Reportedly, she has received in excess of $250,000 in dairy and corn subsidies. Bachman is reportedly opposed to such “socialism,” when small farmers are the recipients.
Item 5 is about keeping corporations, banks, and financial house happy. It is a license to continue trading the same risky items that nearly brought down the world economy in 2008. It will keep Wall Street traders in huge bonuses for at least one more year while the stores on Main Street are slowly going out of business for lack of customers.
Item 4 is another anti-regulation payoff. The food industry is not going to police itself until forced. The FDA was created to protect the public from contaminated foods, counterfeit drugs, and companies that don’t care who they harm. FDA’s new authority to demand recalls and other actions on behalf of consumers annoys corporate farmers, feedlot operators, packinghouses, and other corporate food sources. With few exceptions, prior “self-policed” recalls have happened only after contaminated products have entered the food chain and media attention has alerted the public. The GOP proclaims this to be an adequate system, 99% effective. Ask the victims of the 1% how effectively and adequately protected they feel.
Thousands of Americans die from contaminated produce, meat, and other food items every year. These are not nameless people. They are friends and neighbors, relatives and co-workers who trusted a commercial farm or a processing plant to insure that they are marketing safe food. The packinghouse is not going to monitor their product for contamination unless required to by law and then monitored carefully. Produce companies won’t look out for the consumer either. Food safety is a legitimate concern of government despite the protestations of corporate financial contributors. As a former physician, Mr. Roe should understand those facts and also know how food-borne illness is drastically under-reported. We are left to assume that he simply doesn’t care as long as his sponsors are happy.
Items 1 & 2 directly affect women, children, infants, and other Tennesseans, families who face real hunger daily.
They don’t have corporate sponsors to wine them, dine them, and transport them on corporate aircraft. They are, all too often, working two or more minimum wage jobs and are still unable to feed their selves without the supplemental food programs that Mr. Roe, in his charity, voted to defund. The GOP and tea party mobs will tell you that these people won’t work and should not receive handouts. The GOP, however, keeps the minimum wage so low that no family can live on minimum wage jobs.
Item 6 is demonstrative of Roe’s support for this nation’s veterans. Suicide is a large problem for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families.
On Memorial Day Mr. Roe’s official web site had the following, a description of how much he actually values this country’s veterans:
“As a veteran and a member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I will continue to support legislation to better the health and the well-being of our service members. Last Congress, the House passed a resolution I introduced urging all Americans and people of all nationalities to visit the national cemeteries, memorials, and markers on Memorial Day. It is important to remember and visit the graves of our fallen veterans.
To help protect the sanctity of the final resting places of those who served, I have cosponsored H.R. 430, The Lance Corporal Jeremy Burris Act. This legislation will criminalize any act of vandalizing a veteran’s gravesite. It is our duty to protect the sacred resting place of our fallen heroes. “
His expression of concern for our troops boils down to encouraging people to visit cemeteries and other monuments, and sponsoring a bill to make vandalizing a veteran’s grave a federal crime. The latter action is exactly the sort of duplicate and less than necessary regulation that the GOP hates so much, unless it is their redundancy for political purposes.
Mr. Roe actually had a real chance to serve our troops and turned it down. On 26 May 2001, Congress voted to refuse a $100.00/month increase in pay for troops under hostile fire or in imminent danger. The bill would have raised the benefit from $225.00/month to $325.00/month. That extra $100/ month is a miniscule amount to begrudge the men and women who actually pull duty in places where people wish to kill them.
Mr. Roe, who proclaims his concern for troops and veterans so loudly, voted against the $100/month increase.
There it is, support for dead veterans but not much for the live vets or the active duty troops. I don’t doubt that Mr. Roe believes what he utters about his reasons for voting against those who need help from the government. That $20 million for suicide prevention would mean he’d have less reason to worry about vandalized grave markers. It might even help keep a father or son from leaving a family behind, thus lessening the demand for food assistance. However, such votes would not support the GOP/teavangelist party lines. They would not help fill the re-election campaign coffers. And as with most Representatives, re-election comes before honestly representing the people over big business.
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