Bob Roggio is running for Congress in the 6th District of Pennsylvania.  Now, I’m not terribly privy to, nor concerned with, the local dynamics of his race.  However, he stated some opinions online that I thought were worth looking at:

As our country faces a record $482 billion deficit, gas prices that have soared above $4 per gallon, a war in Iraq that is costing over $12 billion a month and not making us any safer, and healthcare costs that have become prohibitively expensive for over 47 million Americans, we need to shake up Washington and demand new leadership rooted in accountability and fiscal responsibility.

I don’t have a typical politician’s story. My background is in business, not politics. When I was 22, my father died suddenly and I went to work for my father’s company to support my mother and family. For 30 years, I worked to create over 600 new jobs, made affordable healthcare available for my employees, balanced a budget, and took care of the bottom line. My ethical principles and my strident commitment to provide for my employees and family defined my success in business and at home. Our country needs leaders with different experience, proven results, and a pledged dedication to changing the special interest culture in Washington.

Bottom line: we can’t afford more business-as-usual from Washington.

My opponent, Jim Gerlach, was recently fined $120 thousand by the Federal Election Commission for misrepresenting campaign contributions. This constituted the largest penalty ever paid by a member from Pennsylvania. He has voted to weaken house ethics rules and allowed for lobbyists to wine and dine members in their official offices, and pay for their travel. He has accepted over $100 thousand in campaign contributions from Big Oil and has consistently voted to line their pockets with government subsidies.

Jim Gerlach is a career politician who breaks rules and weakens ethical standards. I am a businessman who believes that real change starts with demanding accountability from our leaders.

We need to hold our elected officials to the highest ethical standards. We need to go further than restricting the number of years that public officials have to “cool off” before lobbying Congress. We need to curtail the influence of special interests in governance by demanding a lifetime ban on ex-lawmakers becoming registered lobbyists. We need increased transparency including a demand for public access to lobbying reports and ethics records. I have publicly pledged not to accept any campaign contributions from the oil and gas industries because I believe that we need to cut off the flow of special interest money in politics.

Our country is facing tremendous challenges and it is time to elect new leadership that is truly independent and accountable to the American people.

Now, first of all, this has been the core theme of Democrats for eight years.  Blame everything on Bush.  The public, with an assist from most media, has bought into this lock, stock, and barrel.  However, if one looks at that Bob is saying, things aren’t quite as obvious.

1. The White House sent their budget to Congress that projected a $492 billion deficit.  It is totally up to Congress to approve it, amend it, or completely ignore it.  It wil not be approved.  It definitely will be amended.  It will be amended by countless pork projects that totally rely on Nancy Pelosi to allow or not.  Nancy Pelosi, is most definitely a Democrat.  She is the power that be only because there are more Democrats than Republicans in Congress.  If Bob truly meant what he says, he’d be pressuring Pelosi to reject the White House budget entirely.
2. The primary reason gas is $4 a gallon is because of the misguided oil policies of Jimmy Carter in 1979 and the current House leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, very publicly telling OPEC they’re not going to do anything about it.  If Bob were sincerely wanting to do the right thing, he’d pressure Nancy and Harry into doing the right thing and at the very least making it sound like they’re willing to confront OPEC instead of protecting OPEC from the American people.
3. The war in Iraq, at the time, was supported equally by the very Democrats who are railing against it now.  If he truly wants to support change and get rid of business as usual, he’d be running against them as well.
4. The reason healthcare has gotten so expensive is due primarily to the forced healthcare reforms of the mid 90′s that limited competition with unnecessary and cumbersome restrictions and regulations.  Those were crammed down the industry’s throats by Hillary Clinton.  If Bob truly wanted to do something about the high price of insurance, he’d research just a slight bit and realize that.  If he wants to restore some normalcy to insurance, he’d run on a platform of revoking the Clinton Healthcare reform.

So, how has Bob Roggio decided to cleanse Washington of the career politicians and corruption?

I have publicly pledged not to accept any campaign contributions from the oil and gas industries because I believe that we need to cut off the flow of special interest money in politics.

Sounds fine and good peeps, but here is where his money is coming from so far:

	PAC contributions	$33,900	(8%)
	Individual contributions	$290,786	(72%)
	Candidate self-financing	$80,500	(20%)
	Other	$30	(0%)

He panders to anti-oil sentiment and then flat-out lies.  He’s accepting special interest money.  It’s just special interest groups he particularly thinks is OK.

Me and Roggio do definitely agree on one thing.  It’s time for new leadership in the branches that he seems most concerned with.  Nancy and Harry must go if we want leadership that is not beholden to special interests and protects unethical members ( See William Jefferson ).

The reason I’m singling out Roggio isn’t because I just don’t like Roggio, or even know who his opponent is.  He follows a trend that is undermining the effectiveness of this country that started long ago.

According to his own self-bio, he is a private businessman who has employed hundreds of people.  However, he doesn’t see the roots of the things that have challenged his business at all.  He cites all these challenges to the everyday businessman in the form of profoudly challenging costs associated with employee benefits and his solution is?

Prevent retired Congressmen from becoming lobbyists.

Yeah, right.

Folks, it’s time we start demanding the candidates for office answer for their actions and comments as much or moreso than the incumbents.  The incumbents are vetted by all kinds of media such as opensecrets, main stream media, bloggers, the FEC, you name it, they’re dogging incumbents.  However, these candidates are pretty much allowed to say anything they want in order to get elected.

Putting members in Congress is no different than puttign together a baseball team.  If you pick the best players, you win.  When you’re looking for the best baseball players, you don’t go by what they promise.  You go by what they can do right then and there.  If we, the people, demanded candidates be held accountable for their campaigns as much as the incumbents, then we’d weed out the bad ones before they had a chance to get in.  This transparency in campaigning is already there, people just choose to rely on the rhetoric instead of forcing them to be accountable.  As long as the people continue to be lazy in choosing their representation, then candidates like Roggio have no reason to question their ethics once they are in.

Bottom line, restricting retired congress members to not be able to lobby will change nothing. Former congress members are not affecting Nancy and Harry’s decisions to sell out to OPEC.  They are not affecting the price of health insurance crammed down our throat by the incumbent Hillary Clinton.  They are not responsible for the actions of Jim Gerlach.  They have nothing to do with what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan.  This is not an answer that will solve anything. 

The reason this post is even here is because it’s just very typical Democrat logic in that more regulation of the private sector ( lobbyists ) will cure the ills of the government sector.

Technorati Tags: affordable healthcare, campaign contributions, career politician, ethical principles, ethics rules, federal election commission, fiscal responsibility, gas prices, government subsidies, harry reid, healthcare costs, jim gerlach, lobbyists, nancy pelosi, opec, pennsylvania, roggio, war in iraq

Posted on August 11th, 2008 by anthony
Filed under: congressional campaigns