LIBERADIO(!)

Wah. How dare John Tanner – Congressman from Tennessee and president of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly – do his job. Instead of engaging with the global community to ensure the security of the American people, he should just stay holed up in his Washington DC office obstructing any kind of meaningful legislation and then take credit for it when it passes, like these guys.

That’s what Bill Hobbs and the TN GOP think anyway. In their twisted world view, Congressman Tanner is taking advantage of the American people by leading a congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to some *gasp* fancy-pants European cities when he should be just sitting in his Washington office waiting for his marching orders from Rush Limbaugh:

The estimated average tax cut that middle class Americans will receive for the last six months of the year as part of the bloated ‘economic stimulus’ package that John Tanner and the Democrats passed in Congress today is $13 a week…At $13 a week, it would take the average American several years to save up enough money to take their sweetie to Paris for Valentine’s Day, but John Tanner and Bart Gordon aren’t average American…They are Democrat congressmen who claim to be fiscal conservatives but are right now jetting off to Europe at taxpayers’ expense instead of coming back to Tennessee to explain why they voted for billions of dollars in pork projects and payoffs to special interest groups but only $13 a week for the average middle class taxpayer.

You want to talk about the average middle class taxpayer? OK, let’s talk about the average middle class taxpayer. The last attempt at tax relief for them from one of your guys was a one time only $600 tax rebate in 2001. How’s that $1.44 per week working out for you, dude? More importantly, how’s that that tax rebate working out for the U.S. economy? By one economist’s calculations, that rebate “cost four times as much as it put back into the economy because so much of that money was saved or used to pay off old debts.” In other words, the last time a Republican tried his hand at driving the economy we got the largest 13-month job loss since 1939 (3.6 million since December of 2007 bringing the total number of unemployed Americans to 11.6 million), a plunging stock market, and the near-total collapse of the banking industry.

I also don’t think Hobbs noticed that he’s in the minority when it comes to thinking that Tanner did the wrong thing by voting for the “pork projects and payoffs to special interest groups” – or what we in the reality-based community like to call a “long-term plan to turn around the economy.” Public support for President Obama’s stimulus package increased to 59% in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll – up from 52% in January.

Hobbs also conveniently leaves out a couple of other simple facts, 1) Tanner’s delegation is bi-partisan – joining tanner are Republican Reps. John Boozman (Ark.); Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.) and Jeff Miller (Fla.) – and 2) traveling to these places – no matter how fabulous – is what these particular lawmakers do to, you know, keep up with political, economic and security challenges that face the United States. At least that’s what the Defense News – which is part of the Army Times Publishing Company, the leading military and government news periodical publisher in the world – says.

Congressman Tanner has a full schedule on this trip and if he and the Mrs. are lucky they might be able to fit in a nice meal.

H/T: Jeff Woods at the Scene’s Pith in the Wind