Boise News

Guest opinion by walt minnick

Sali’s Vote Threatens Needed Funds

By Walt Minnick, 12-08-07

Boise businessman Walt Minnick is running for the Democratic nomination for the 1st Congressional District seat in Congress.  His primary opponents are Rand Lewis and Larry Grant.  The winner will face Congressman Bill Sali in November 2008.

Congressman Bill Sali has a very strange view of the world.  His inability to work with even his fellow Republicans makes him an ineffective advocate for Idaho.

Now he claims Thomas Jefferson’s endorsement for his being one of the two deciding votes that killed an important appropriations bill.  Sali hails his own “courage” for doing so.

No one can be sure how Thomas Jefferson would have voted on that bill.  But most Idahoans can know there’s nothing courageous about Congressman Sali’s vote.

I’m sure that students at NNU, where funding for the nursing program is now threatened, don’t think of that vote as courageous.  I’m sure that Idaho drivers stuck in traffic because the improvement of Highway 95 is now threatened don’t think his vote was courageous.  And whatever lip service Congressman Sali has paid to the disabled, there’s nothing courageous about threatening funding for Idaho’s Special Olympics.

Sali’s big talk about voting against a few dribs and drabs of federal spending would be more convincing if he were actually taking on the politicians in Washington who have nearly doubled the national debt in seven years while cutting taxes for oil companies and Wall Street millionaires.

Or if he had voted to curtail pork barrel earmarks by all Congressmen when that bill was introduced at the beginning of this Congress--and for legislation requiring that any new Congressional spending be offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Or if he had introduced a bill to require that the federal government balance its budget annually like you and I and the state of Idaho have to do every year. 

Or if he were taking on our biggest boondoggle of all – ever increasing spending on the war in Iraq, a war whose costs are pushing ever-closer to $1 trillion. while keeping our troops pinned down in a civil war among groups who have been fighting each other for thousands of years.  Playing umpire and policeman when we should be focusing our military on the capture of Osama bin Laden and the terrorists now holed up in Pakistan who brought down the World Trade Center.

Congressman Sali has done none of those things.  .

Idahoans know we need to restore fiscal sanity in Washington.  We need a Congressman with the courage to vote to spend only what we can pay for.  One who will oppose loading trillions of dollars of new national debt onto our kids and grand-kids.  One who knows we need to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment and stop lavishing new tax breaks on big oil companies and our wealthiest millionaires.  And one who won’t brag about having the “courage” to vote against funding Idaho’s Special Olympics and money for new nurses at NNU while slavishly backing the runaway spending of an Administration that has never once in 7 years submitted a balanced budget!

But Idahoans also know we need a Congressman with the compassion to treat our troops with respect by giving them the medical help and educational benefits they deserve.  Who wants all our citizens to have a health insurance policy.  Who wants to help all our kids to be able to afford college.

We must spend less, but what we do spend must be on the right things.  Careful spending that builds a stronger America.  And less grandstanding about cutting tiny projects helpful to our own state while ignoring the real spending issues facing a nation slowly drowning in a sea of debt.  That’s really what Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers would expect from Congressman Sali.  And, once accomplished, for other folks to brag about.

Publisher’s note on full disclosure:  Walt Minnick’s wife is a longtime close friend of mine, and I volunteered a few hours in Minnick’s race for Senate in 1996.

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