McCollum's Disastrous Interview

Truenorth blog does a great job of recapping Betty McCollum's disappointing interview with Esme Murphy on WCCO. I won't say much, other than I feel dumber for listening to her talk. Guess the new mantra is to blame Bush. I don't know how she will be able to debate Teresa Collett when she could hardly hold a conversation; it really seems like it was scripted.

Listen to interview here: http://www.myfitv.com/videos/400497

McCollum's Disastrous Interview

Written by Gary Gross

Monday, 19 July 2010 06:54

My first reaction after watching Esme Murphy's interview of Betty McCollum was "Does Rep. McCollum really think her constituents are that stupid"? Here's the transcript from the key part of the interview: MURPHY: In terms of the recovery, there has been alot of criticism from Republicans that the recovery is not enough and that what the President has done with his stimulus package, while it did make some improvements in terms of the economy, it has basically put us in the position of trillion dollar deficits. Your thoughts on whether or not there needs to be a second round of stimulus spending. MCCOLLUM: Well, first off, the deficits that we're facing was caused by the unpaid for Bush tax cuts; it was caused by two wars, both Afghanistan and Iraq, all being put on a credit card, with no shared responsibility with the American public to pay for the wars as many of our servicemen and women have given their all and made huge sacrifices. So that's the big bulk. We inherited that mess and then you add the Wall Street crisis and not being regulated for all those years and the failure of our financial institutions to protect consumers' investments and retirements and the rest. So if you look at that, that is the big part of our debt. Now, what do we do in the meantime? Well, stimulus, funding to keep Americans working, to move our economy forward and create confidence is what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was about. That's what I voted for... It's insulting to hear Betty McCollum, or any other liberal, blame President Bush for the trillion dollar deficits that didn't happen until Democrats took control of both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. The last annual deficit from when Republicans controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. was $160,000,000,000. The first deficit from total Democratic control was $1,400,000,000,000. For people who were educated in government schools, the Democrat-controlled deficit is almost 9 times bigger than the last GOP-controlled deficit. Rep. McCollum wants people to think that the budgeting and appropriating decisions made by Democrats like President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are President Bush's fault, that everything is President Bush's fault. That's intellectually indefensible BS. My condolences to the people living in MN-04. My advice, and I don't give advice often, is to elect Teresa Collett and end Betty McCollum's reign of intellectual incoherence. Nobody should be subjected to that level of intellectual dishonesty legislative irrelevance, especially when there's a vastly superior option. Another thing that Rep. McCollum said that's intellectually irresponsible is her saying that the financial meltdown of late 2008 was all Wall Street's fault. That's intellectually indefensible, too. I'm not denying that firms like AIG and Goldman Sachs didn't play major roles in creating the crisis. I'm simply arguing that Fannie and Freddie, the GSEs, aka the government, Rep. Barney Frank, (D-MA), and Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-CT), played immensely bigger roles in the financial meltdown than did Wall Street. Not coincidentally, the finreg bill that Rep. McCollum voted for exempted Fannie and Freddie from the scrutiny that's heading Wall Street's direction. Shouldn't we expect legislators to spend our taxes more responsibly? Shouldn't legislators be more than Speaker Pelosi's rubberstamp? Betty McCollum voted for Obamacare, Cap and Trade and ARRA. She's also voted for the omnibus spending bill of 2009 that funded government for the duration of FY2009. Rep. McCollum even voted the NEA's wishes to eliminate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program that takes underprivileged inner city students out of violence-riddled schools and puts them into schools like Sidwell Friends, aka the school for presidents' children like Sasha and Malia Obama and Chelsea Clinton. MN-04, the choice is clear. You can pick someone who cares about the Constitution (Teresa Collett) or you can elect someone who routinely insults your intelligence, namely Rep. McCollum. Comments welcome at LFR.