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Huelskamp protests committee assignments
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Dear Editor,
In a Dec. 3 statement, Representative Tim Huelskamp protested not being reappointed to the House Budget and Agriculture Committees, saying, this is clearly a vindictive move. On Dec. 11, he issued a statement after receiving a response to his request that the House Republican Leadership disclose the secret scorecard use to determine committee assignments. He said, with this letter, Speaker Boehner has confirmed a secret scorecard was used to punish conservative Republican Congressmen.” Oddly enough the letter actually states, there is no scorecard or any other single criteria used to determine committee assignments. (All of these statements are available at huelskamp.house.gov.) Using some kind of Opposite-World logic Rep. Huelskamp has declared victimhood. But we in the first Congressional district of Kansas are no ones victims.
The 112th Congress of Rep. Huelskamps first term has enacted 207 public laws. The average over the last 65 years has been 643 with 333 the previous low. With a critical need to solve our economic and debt problems this Congress has easily been the most dysfunctional and unproductive in the modern era.
Through the actions of our representative, we in the first district have contributed fully to this failure. We voted against the bipartisan farm bill that had been approved by the Senate. We voted against the so called fiscal cliff debt ceiling law that is now forcing us to address hard realities about taxes and spending. We sponsored 26 bills, none of which became law. We cosponsored 234 bills, only four of which became law.
The House leadership recognizes that our nation cannot afford another two years of Congressional failure. We in the first district, through the actions of our representative, essentially voted ourselves off of the committees.
The people who vote yes for a law determine what goes into the law. That is what democracy is. If there is something we wanted in a law that we voted against, it is no credit to us. It was put there by someone who voted for the law. We have no influence over a law that we vote against. The last two years have proven that. We can have philosophical purity or participate in democracy; we dont get to do both. By our own choice, we in the first district have not been participating for two years. Committee assignments do not change that.
Sincerely,
John Sturn
Ellinwood