Enough Already - Time for House GOP to "DO THEIR JOB" - Vote for a Clean CR and Debt Ceiling Hike

This is my letter from Saturday to my Congressman Tom Cole, Republican from the 4th District of Oklahoma.  I have been sending him emails voicing my disgust now for two weeks but doubt if it makes a difference:

You are probably as tired of hearing from me as I am writing but you need to understand how many of the civil service I know feel about the attacks that have been coming their way from the GOP.  They are totally disgusted.  I can only speak for white collar civil service and the hours many of them put in over 40 each week because of cutbacks.  I was one myself and my husband had 33 years before retiring and there were times on source selection and other programs he worked through the weekend without additional pay. 

 There are many more like him at all the places we have been assigned and yet GOP members of Congress attack them as worthless and overpaid.   

The answer is simple - do your job - pass a Clear CR and Debt Ceiling Hike and then negotiate.  If you hadn't negotiated in bad faith earlier, this would not be a problem but when Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted - you tainted any further negotiations.  What makes the GOP cave to the Tea Party - we all know the answer to that -- lack of backbone and refusing to stand up for the American people.   

You are the only person of our delegation who even voted for VAWA so I know you are not hard right.  Please join Peter King in speaking up instead of going along to get along.  Our district deserves better.   

Not one penny should be going to members of Congress after 1 October when you cannot pass a budget and refused 18 times to go to Conference Committee on the Budget so you could shut down Government as a Conference.  Obvious from the Saturday night video you were enjoying the possibility of a shutdown just as much as the TP.  What happened to the Tom Cole I worked for to send to Congress? 

How would you like to be working and not getting paid or be a veteran and not sure you will see another check?  If the GOP lets this Nation default all of you should resign immediately for being too stupid to pass clean bills and stop wanting something in return. 

GOP according to Boehner got 98% the last time so now you want more?  That veterans bill was a sham cutting $6.1B more then agreed.  The GOP Conference doesn't have a clue about the oath they took as you take the Nation toward default. 

Do your job! 

After I sent this, I discovered that the GOP in the House had changed the rules at the last minute to make it near to impossible for the Democrats to bring anything to the floor as they decided everything had to go through Cantor.  This is NOT what our founding fathers envisioned.  The House is supposed to represent the people but the GOP House only represents the wealthy and the hard right of the GOP like the Tea Party, social conservatives, and religious to name a few.  The rest of us in red districts are not represented by today's Republican Representatives until we live in the NE where you still find a few common sense GOP compared to the Red States.

This video says it all and shows a contempt the Koch Bros GOP House has for the American people to change a rule right before the shutdown:

Congressman Cole and Congresswoman Fallin returning from DC to survey the damage in the 4th District

The above picture was of a Country Boy grocery store which sat on Highway 9 east of Norman that served the eastern part of the County. Damage similar to that is throughout a 40 square mile area.

Today Congressman Cole will be back in the district shortly to receive briefings from the Sheriff and the Mayor on yesterdays tornadoes that roared through Cleveland County and other parts of his 4th District. There are generator issues caused by the tornado at Lake Thunderbird which is a source of water for the local communities including Norman. This area is on water rationing because there is also trouble at Lake Stanley Draper where Oklahoma City gets some of their water.

Congresswoman Fallin will be in Seminole to view their damage. A helicopter belonging to the OU Medical Center which was on a run was damaged at the Seminole and can no longer fly.

For several days the National Weather Service (NWS) here in Norman was warning residents of Oklahoma that yesterday was going to have the conditions ripe for a tornado outbreak across Oklahoma. They nailed that one. Was out for lunch when the initial warnings hit but nothing much was showing up on radar. Within a short time storms started showing up on radar and a tornado was on the ground in the Yukon area. The outbreak of severe weather including tornadoes exploded from there ahead of a dry line that was moving through the state.

Yesterday was a day for storm chasers. Not only does the NWS use storm chasers but out local TV stations all have storm chasers to video the storms and alert the stations to where the storms are going next and how fast they are growing. If you have power, you watch the local stations track these storms block by block so you know where the storms are going and if the rotation in the wall clouds are on the ground as the tornadoes drop to the group.

The 'Norman' tornado started with a white wisp on the TV screen that was sent back to the station by a storm chaser just a short distance from the National Weather Service and Storms Prediction Center at the corner of Jenkins and Highway 9 in Norman. You could say they were ground zero for the start of what is now dubbed the 'Norman' tornado which continued to grow knocking cars off of Hwy 9 on its way to growing larger and larger reaching at least a mile wide by the time it reached counties to the east of Cleveland County. Storm Chasers in the Channel 9 helicopter sent back pictures as this tornado gained strength and grew over Lake Thunderbird. This tornado then slammed Little Axe and Tecumseh and kept going east causing damage for miles.

There was also a tornado just a few miles north of Norman happening at the same time as the Norman tornado which took out three of the huge high voltage power lines snapping them in two like toothpicks. That one hit Lake Stanley Draper and caused problems for the Oklahoma City water supply. The rotation in the clouds was very visible but the tornadoes in some instances became rain wrapped especially the Norman one that picked up moisture out of Lake Thunderbird where it took out the Marina and tossed boats. The Marina is now floating in the lake.

Another tornado on I-40 closed the interstate due to cars and trucks being tossed around and in the Choctaw area took out Love's Country store where many of us have stopped over the years while traveling I-40 back to OKC/Norman.

Damage is everywhere in the area south and north of the main parts of Norman. We believe because of all the advance warning we had, more lives were not lost or injuries because when the word goes out in Oklahoma the conditions are ripe for tornado outbreaks, people listen. One of the trailer parks that was hard hit has a safe room for residents which meant even though their homes were destroyed they remained safe in the shelter.

There have been seven deaths so far and crews are doing a second search of a 49-square-mile area hard hit by tornadoes Monday night.

We are thankful for having two members of Congress that immediately made plans to return to the area to see how they could help. The 4th District is so fortunate to have Tom Cole as our Congressman because he is always there for the District and this is just one more example.

Congresswoman Fallin is the same way for the 5th District which includes a large portion of Oklahoma City and counties to the east that were hit especially hard.

Our prayers and thoughts are with those who lost loved ones and friends and to the people who are injured and lost everything when their homes were destroyed. Oklahomans will rebuild and once again we will see that spirit of neighbor helping neighbor that this State has the reputation.

One bright spot is the fact that the NWS was right in the center of the Norman tornado forming and the data they will have collected will be priceless to use in tornado prediction.

Read more about yesterday's tornadoes at The Oklahoman

One Year Later: Stimulus Bill Failed to Create Jobs

The following quote from Congressman Cole is the one that every Republican candidate for Congress needs to keep in mind as they give voters the facts on the "jobs" bill so every last voter understands the bait and switch tactic the Democrats are using:

"While they prepare to shove another multi-billion dollar spending bill through Congress, they no longer refer to it as a "stimulus" bill; now they call it a "jobs" bill. But make no mistake: They may have changed the name, but the substance of the legislation remains the same – more spending, more government and more debt."

Candidates need to stress the fact that the outcome is the same as "Stimulus I" -- more spending, more government and more debt which is what was flawed about the stimulus bill. The original "stimulus" bill seems to have stimulated more job job growth in the Federal Sector as more government employees are being hired at the expense of contractor jobs which should never be an intention of any bill. The number of federal employees needs decreased not increased as the benefits paid by the taxpayer to Federal employees is outrageous along with the current salary structure.

Now that Obama and the Democrats are back for more of our tax dollars under the new name of "job's" bill versus Stimulus II, Republicans need to tell them once again NO!

Feb 12, 2010

One Year Later: Stimulus Bill Failed to Create Jobs

By: Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK)

Almost exactly a year after seeing 787 billion of their tax dollars evaporate courtesy of a so-called “stimulus bill,” Americans are justifiably running out of patience and asking “Where are the jobs?” President Obama and congressional Democrats rushed the stimulus bill through Congress last February amid dire predictions that failure to pass the bill would result in double-digit unemployment, while passage would keep the jobless rate below 8 percent. In the months after President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, the unemployment rate topped 10 percent and remains close to that today. Nationwide, 3.3 million jobs have been lost. Oklahoma saw its unemployment rate jump from 4.2 percent to 7.1 percent in a year’s time. Our state’s jobless rate has ticked back down slightly to 6.6 percent, but that’s little comfort to those who are still out of work.

I voted against the stimulus bill because I believed it was a pork-laden giveaway to liberal special interest groups that would serve only to grow the government and add to the deficit while doing too little to create jobs and invest in our infrastructure. One year later, it’s clear that the stimulus bill has failed even more spectacularly than I had feared.

Remarkably, the Obama administration's response to this failed economic experiment is more of the same. Rather than embracing policies that would reduce the size of government and provide tax incentives for small businesses to create jobs, they remain sidetracked by other objectives, like a record-breaking spending plan and a government takeover of our health care system. Along with the misguided cap-and-trade bill, these policies actually discourage employers from hiring by creating uncertainty in the markets and guaranteeing punishing tax hikes for businesses and manufacturers. It’s no wonder businesses are hesitant to make new hires when they know the liberals who control Washington, D.C., are poised to pass bill after bill that will dramatically raise costs and impose new regulations.

There is one indication that President Obama and his allies learned something over the past year. While they prepare to shove another multi-billion dollar spending bill through Congress, they no longer refer to it as a "stimulus" bill; now they call it a "jobs" bill. But make no mistake: They may have changed the name, but the substance of the legislation remains the same – more spending, more government and more debt. By contrast, conservatives have proposed an economic recovery plan that promotes job creation through a variety of fiscally responsible policies, including targeted tax cuts for businesses.

The president has been talking a lot lately about bipartisanship. Unfortunately, his idea of bipartisan cooperation begins and ends with his proposal to invite Republicans to a televised summit…about Democrat-authored health care legislation. Not only does this symbolic gesture fail to give fair consideration to Republican proposals, it ignores the more pressing issues of job creation, spending restraint and deficit reduction. The American people are most certainly focused on these issues even if the Obama administration is not. By truly considering Republican plans, the president can show both bipartisanship and seriousness about making the tough choices necessary for economic recovery. It is my hope he will do so in the months ahead.

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