Today, I had the honor of meeting and hearing Representative Bobby Scott (VA-03) speak at the Virginia Beach Democrats breakfast meeting. Rep. Bobby Scott is a member of the Black Congressional Caucus, and has been a champion for liberal causes and a well known defender of the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives since 1992.
Bobby Scott came armed with handouts, devastatingly depicting the financial nightmare the Republicans have created for our country. In January 2001, we had a surplus of $5.6 trillion, while now it is projected in 2007 that the deficit will equal a staggering $2.9 trillion -- that is an $8.5 trillion spending spree the Republicans went on. But this is not just a George W. Bush phenomenon. The most telling picture was the pattern of Republican financial mismanagement. Starting with the Ford administration, as the GOP began to drift radically rightword, deficits soared under GOP direction, while budgets stabilized and turned into surpluses under responsible Democratic ones.
So why are we so heavily in debt now? Rep. Scott said that the answer of "we are at war" simply does not add up. The war, costing $300 billion, is only .3 of the $8.5 trillion free fall. Even the .2 spent on Katrina doesn't account for this giant hole in our budget. No, the reason we are heavily in debt is because of the tax cuts, the majority of which went to the wealthiest Americans.
To put it directly, Rep. Scott said the state of the budget is not in line with our moral values. Quoting Matthew 25:40, he said "...Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.". Instead of spending $300 billion on interest payments, the price we are paying for Republican record deficits, we could have put 10 million unemployed Americans to work at $30,000 a year.
Not only have Republicans gutted our budget, Rep. Scott spoke of how they are now trying to dismantle settled law, like our basic civil and human rights. Right now, he continued, they are debating whether we should torture people. At first it seemed that the Republican protest in the Senate would stop it. However, they went behind closed doors to "compromise", and came out saying, "Well, instead of breaking five parts of the Constitution, we're only going to break two parts". In addition, the wiretapping law that passed the House would give the Attorney General the power to immunize anyone who had broken the law, something formally only the President had the power to do.
The only way to stop the immoral budget and the gutting of the Constitution is to change over the Congress to the Democrats. This will mean getting Jim Webb and, in our district, Phil Kellam elected to the Congress, Rep. Scott concluded.
From my own observations today, there is a lot of activity and enthusiasm in our traditionally conservative district. Fifty people were expected at this event, but eighty showed up. The political climate here started to change when Tim Kaine won Virginia Beach in 2005, the first time in many years for a Democrat to take the Beach in a statewide election. And we are determined to keep the momentum going of turning our district blue!
What a great morning to see such a principled and well respected representative speak, and see hope in the eyes of so many Democrats.
I only told Scott that Howard Dean (who he endorsed) was the second politician I met who spoke more common sense than nonsense, he was the first. I did a bunch of volunteer web design/dev work for him in the 04 campaign; that was about twenty hours very well spent. ;)