Dedicated to the proposition that Nancy Boyda is a one termer.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Boyda's First Bill

Last week, Nancy Boyda was tapped by Democrats to introduce a bill that would strip federal pensions from corrupt Members of Congress. This is not a new idea, Republicans in the House passed a similar measure before, but Democrats in the Senate would not let it move.

The Republican bill would have stripped pensions from corrupt Members of Congress for 21 separate fraudulent or otherwise corrupt practices, Boyda would only have stripped it for 4 (yes FOUR, or 20% as good as the Republican bill). To her credit, she added a 5th as the bill went to the floor.

Not only was Boyda's bill inferior in its attempt to punish corrupt Members of Congress, but she and the Democrats didn't allow the bill to be considered by a committee. And, they brought it to the House floor without a chance for an amendment. That's right, Republicans were not allowed a chance to add back the other 16 felonies that would prevent a Member of Congress from receiving a taxpayer-funded pension.

Oh, and the Democrats were about to exempt the entire next two years of criminal activity from being covered, but changed their mind on that at the last minute.

Yet, Nancy Boyda went to the House floor and said the American people demanded that Congress clean up its act while at the very same time eliminating the bi-partisanship she said she would bring to Washington by denying the rights of Republicans to make the bill better.

It's the height of hypocrisy to suggest that this little stunt was anything but pure politics. If Boyda wanted to clean up Congress, why put forward such a weak piece of legislation.

And here's the big question, will any Kansas newspapers pick up on the fact that this legislation is just a watered down political ploy or not? I bet not.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's the height of hypocrisy to crticize Boyda when your "do nothing" man Ryan sat on his butt and did NOTHING about this issue.

Anonymous said...

First, Ryun voted for HR 4975 the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act last year which included these provisions and was held up by the Senate or it would have become law. It should have been stronger as well, but to say Ryun did nothing is factually incorrect.

Second, what is the height of hypocrisy is for Democrats to claim they are being bi-partisan when they won't allow amendments to make a bill like this stronger. I know they have a guy who's going to be convicted of bribery still in their caucus in William Jefferson, are there others they are trying to protect? John Kerry opposes having this legislation apply to this session of Congress. Why's that? It just shows they are more intent on abusing power and protecting a vulnerable freshman member than they are on getting this right. It's how they ran the first 100 hours of being in the majority, running roughshod over the minority without giving them copies of the bills 48 hours in advance like they promised, without a committee hearing, and without a chance for an amendment.

Democrats are proving they were hypocrites last fall when they were making bi-partisan campaign promises.

Anonymous said...

Boyda had nothing to do with this bill - Democrat leadership wrote it. Check out Bob Novak's column:


"By the time Democrats made it to the floor, they were still making changes to the offenses that could disqualify a member from receiving a pension. Freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), officially the bill's sponsor, sat by as Democratic leaders scribbled last-second changes to the bill right in front of her."

Anonymous said...

Also an excellent point, which is what this blog pointed out in a previous post. Democrats realize Boyda is the poster child for getting beat in 2008 and wanted to bolster her chances. It worked to some extent. She got nothing but fluffy press coverage.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but nobody saw Ryan leading the way to stamp out corruption in Congress -- we only saw him lie about felons he wanted to distance himself from.

"HR 4975 the Lobbying Accountability and Transparency Act?" Don't make us laugh! Even Rethugs knew it wasn't worth the paper it was written on, which is why it fell flat in a Rethug controlled Congress!

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