I just watched the debate in Longview between Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent, and I was not impressed by our representative.
Again, she grappled with answers to simple questions and still doesn’t understand federalism. She couldn’t maintain eye contact again; was she looking for answers or lying? I don’t know, but it didn’t look good.
She talked about the money she brought back to Washington. The money well is much deeper than people think. The White House website says as of August only two-thirds of the Inflation Reduction Act money is allocated. It’s harder to spend and giveaway trillions than they thought. And Sen. Patty Murray has beat the bridge drum for over 20 years and taken credit for the money over our congresswoman. She can’t explain how Kent’s idea of a third bridge is bad. You can’t reduce traffic by rebuilding the same bridge. We need more lanes for throughput. She complained about the loss of land to eminent domain, a valid issue, but it’s the price of growth.
She flaunts being bipartisan. Anyone can look at her votes and see when she voted against her party none of them were important. Votes are cumulative and an average of all votes.
A perfect example was the recent Somalia vote where she and Republican Anna Paulina Luna from Florida both voted yes but the measure lost 102 to 321. Both votes worked to the other’s advantage. Two weeks ago, her symbolic vote for the short-term spending bill went down while she voted along with Republicans knowing it would fail.
She abstained her vote on a FISA Act amendment requiring a court-approved search warrant before searching U.S. citizens’ private communications. It failed 212-212.
One of her first votes in 2023, she voted to allow men in women’s sports even though she failed to justify the vote last night. When her vote counted, she wasn’t there.
A balanced budget amendment sounds good, but it’s a pipe dream. Good luck getting two-thirds of both houses and 75% of the states to agree on anything.
Kent called for no more omnibus spending bills, which is much more practical. Single issue bills to prevent things like $2.7 million grants to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill and the United States Agency for International Development spending $6 million to promote Egyptian tourism.
Kent was very magnanimous by not bringing up her comment about people not staying up at night worrying about the border. She voted against pulling personnel from the Middle East and for funding for Ukraine while ignoring our Southern border. She voted against House Resolution 2, a strong, comprehensive border bill. Had she really been for border security, she would have voted with the Republicans, but not knowing the potential results, she voted party-line with the Democrats, and it passed and has been sitting in the Senate ever since.
For the single-issue voters, Kent very explicitly said he would not vote for an abortion ban, contrary to what her ads state.
She’s like a bad éclair, looks good until you dig in.
Ray Anderson
Ethel
