Time for a Texas earthquake to shake Cornyn out of his cushy seat.
Here are a few of Cornyn's lowlights.
Texans who don't have a cushy financial pile to rest their posteriors on are of a decidedly different view according to a UT poll:
That would be the Congress you've been squatting in for the past six years, Senator, in case you mislaid your clue this morning.
In the interests of jogging your memory, let's recap some of your Senatorial careers lowlights regarding the economy:
FACT: Cornyn Voted to Bailout Wall Street with $700 Billion Taxpayer Dollars.
* Cornyn Voted for $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout. In 2008, Cornyn voted for passage of the bill that would authorize up to $700 billion to be given in installments to the Treasury Department to establish a program to buy certain mortgage-backed securities and other assets relating to mortgages. The agency would be required to insure the assets and set up systems for congressional oversight. By unanimous consent, the Senate agreed to raise the majority requirement for passage of the bill to 60 votes. The bill passed 74-25. [HR 1424, Vote #213, 10/01/08]
Remind me, Senator, why you voted for a record breaking bailout if the sky WASN'T falling.
FACT: Cornyn Has Voted for Massive Amounts of Pork and Secured Millions in Earmarks.
* Cornyn Voted for Massive Amounts of Pork. John Cornyn is one of the more outspoken critics of congressional earmarks, a.k.a., pork, but he has voted for bills that contained massive amounts of pork. Sen. Cornyn has voted for spending money on Alaskan sea otters, rural obesity studies, traffic jams in North Dakota, marketing specialty cheeses from Wisconsin, an indoor rainforest in Iowa and a waterfree urinal conservation initiative. [Stanford Report on Sen. John Cornyn, Roll Call 28, 2003; 2003 Pig Book, Citizens Against Government Waste, Roll Call 34, 2003, Roll Call 3, 2004, 2004 Pig Book; Citizens Against Government Waste, Roll Call 215, 2004; 2005 Pig Book, Citizens Against Government Waste, 2006 Pig Book, Citizens Against Government Waste; Voting Record, Project Vote Smart]
An indoor rainforest in Iowa? Really Senator? And with all due respect to the great state of North Dakota, how bad can their traffic jams be? I realize you probably don't drive your ownself around, but as an experiment, how about trying Houston at 4 p.m., just for kicks.
* Cornyn Secured $154,531,780 in Earmarks in 2007. According to the Houston Chronicle, Cornyn secured $154,531,780 in Earmarks in 2007. [Houston Chronicle, 3/23/08]
Wait, I thought earmarks were supposed to be bad. Huh.
* Cornyn's Earmarks Disclosed After He Denounced Them. According to The San Antonio Express-News, "Cornyn joined Hutchison and the local congressional delegation in seeking the earmark for the river improvements project. Still, he said, 'every earmark ought to be debated and voted on in the clear light of day. The current system is broken and it needs to be fixed'...Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan watchdog group, ranked Hutchison 23rd in the Senate for earmarks, securing $254 million in funds through requests with other congressional members. Cornyn ranked 53rd, getting $154 million for projects in Texas." [San Antonio Express-News, 3/29/08]
Oh. Dear. How embarrassing. If you had any sense of shame, which the Big Bad John video seems to indicate-not so much.
* Citizens Against Government Waste Classified $154,761,233 in Cornyn Earmarks as "Pork". According to the non-partisan Citizens against Government Waste Sen. John Cornyn requested $154,761,233 in earmarks in 2008 which they labeled as pork in their 2008 Pig Book. [2008 Congressional Pig Book, accessed, 10/15/2008]
BACONBACONBACON
FACT: Cornyn Has Consistently Voted Against Reigning in Spending.
· Cornyn Voted for Increasing the Debt Limit by More Than $2.5 Trillion. John Cornyn voted to allow the government debt to grow by more than $2.5 trillion. [Roll Call 202, 5/23/03; Roll Call 213, 11/17/04; Roll Call 54, 3/16/06
]
That's "trillion" with a "WTF"!!??!
· Cornyn Cast Deciding Vote For Final FY04 Budget Resolution Increasing Federal Deficit to Record Levels. Critics argued that the final budget resolution would increase the federal deficit to record levels of $347 billion in 2003 and $385 billion in 2004 and would result in a $1.7 trillion deficit in 2013. It narrowly passed, with Vice President Cheney breaking a 50-50 tie. [Vote 134, 4/11/03; AP, 4/11/03; Senate Budget Committee Democratic Caucus, 4/11/03]
It's all fun and games until somebody wrecks an economy...
FACT: Wealthiest 1% of Texans Received 34.9% of the Bush Tax Cuts Cornyn Supported.
* Wealthiest 1% of Texans Received 34.9% of the Bush Tax Cuts. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, from 2001-2010, the wealthiest 1% of Texas residents, who had an average income of $1.3 million in 2006, will receive 34.9% of the Bush tax cuts. Meanwhile, the poorest 60% will get only 18.8% of the tax cuts, with an average annual tax cut over the 10 years of only $452 while the average tax cut for the wealthy is more than $49,921 per year. [Citizens for Tax Justice, 10/10/06]
Perhaps it's time to give the other 99% of Texans more than a cynical thought in the Senate. (Rick Noriega will do that, since you don't seem up to the job.)
FACT: Cornyn Sponsored a National Sales Tax – 30% Tax on Everything You Buy That Would Raise Taxes on 80% of Texans.
· John Cornyn's National Sales Tax (Senate Bill 1025) would dramatically raise taxes on working families in Texas. Only days after promising that he would "vigorously oppose any effort to raise taxes on working families," Cornyn co-sponsored a bill that would "eliminate income, capital gains, payroll, estate, gift, corporate and self-employment taxes, and would replace them with a national retail sales tax." (March 30, 2007).
Well, I guess if you assume working families don't buy anything because the minimum wage suppresses the scale, then they shouldn't mind a national sales tax, right?
·
The Cornyn "FairTax" Is A National Sales Tax of 30%. "The FairTax replaces the income tax and all other federal taxes with a national consumption tax. The FairTax is levied only once, at the point of purchase on new goods and services." Americans For Fair Taxation claim that the FairTax is a 23% national sales tax, but according to the Institute On Taxation and Economic Policy, the "23 percent figure comes from dividing the sales tax by the cost of purchases plus the tax." [Americans For Fair Taxation website, accessed 4/7/06; "The Effects of Replacing Most Federal Taxes with a National Sales Tax A State-by-State Distributional Analysis," Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 9/04]
30% Sales Tax? That wouldn't eliminate state and local taxes, btw, so we're talking about 40 cents out of every dollar you spend going to taxes-from the first dollar.
· Cornyn Would Raise Taxes On Middle Class Texans. According to the ITEP figures, a Texas family making $55,900 a year would see their taxes go up more than $1,900 a year. A Texan making $34,300 would see his or her taxes go up more than $3,200 a year. ["The Effects of Replacing Most Federal Taxes with a National Sales Tax A State-by-State Distributional Analysis," Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 9/04]
I got better things to do with that $1,900 than sending it to the richest Americans.
You know what, John, time to take a rest. You can go sulk in the corner with your buddy Phil "The Bad Economy is All In Your Head" Gramm.
We'll take a Senator for all of Texas, not just the wealthiest 1%.