-By Warner Todd Huston
On Friday, July 20, Politico reported that GOP leadership in the House beat back an attempt by recalcitrant members of their own caucus to continue to quietly support the sort of pork spending that gave us Solyndra in the first place.
House GOP leadership has been beating the Democrats up for the pure wasteful spending that was Democrat support for the now bankrupted “green energy” company Solyndra. But a few Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee wanted to buck the anti-bailout theme and quietly keep the spending program that allowed the “loans” to Solyndra to continue.
According to Politico:
At least three House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans had publicly expressed reservations about the GOP-backed “No More Solyndras Act” during the past week. They griped, to varying degrees, about a provision that would effectively end the loan guarantee program — and argued that it needs to be reformed, not killed.
As Politico noted, the Wall Street Journal also lambasted these Republicans calling them the “Solyndra Wing” of the GOP and chiding them for loving corporate welfare.
The three Republicans hoping to re-open the corporate welfare spigot are Joe Barton (Texas), Michael Burgess (Texas), and Phil Gingrey (Georgia).
So, as we can see here, there is a large and powerful block of the GOP that is fully in support of the sort of disgusting, un-American waste, and pork barrel spending that results in such programs as the “loan guarantees” that sent millions of U.S. tax dollars into the black hole that is Solyndra — a company that will never pay back the so-called loans afforded it by Democrats wishing to help Obama campaign contributors.
This is why the GOP cannot be fully trusted. The party is only nominally the fiscally responsible party, but not a party that is wholly dedicated to that goal. Certainly there are no Democrats that are for fiscal responsibility, but unfortunately there are too many Republicans that are just like the socialist, big-government, nanny state-loving Democrats.
This is why such activists as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform are necessary. This is also one of the reasons why the Tea Party sprang to life like it did. If the GOP was really the party of fiscal responsibility the Tea Party would never have arisen in the first place. The Tea Party arose in response not just to Democrats and Obama but to failed Republicans, too!
Much as we are forced to support the GOP because the alternative is disaster, we also have to remember the disasters just under the skin of the Republican Party, those waiting to burst free if we stop holding them to account. Sadly, conservatives are only in the GOP by default, not choice.
It’s a shame that we have a socialist party in the Democrats and a party that would love to join them if only we’d look the other way in the Republicans.
It is also why the Tea Party is the only force still out there in American politics trying to keep the fires of liberty burning and holding our government accountable to the Constitution.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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