Showing his true (blue) colors

Oh, the tangled webs politicians weave. You know, for a guy who’d only had one elected post prior to becoming Congressman – a post which wasn’t by its nature political (as a State’s Attorney, he should have been concerned with enforcement of the law, not creating it), Frank Kratovil has shown that he can play the political games like a ten-term veteran.

Let’s take yesterday’s stimulus package votes as an example. First, though, I want to back up and repeat what Frank released when he voted against the original House version of the stimulus package:

Today, Congressman Frank Kratovil voted against a proposed economic stimulus package saying that not enough of its spending was focused on immediate, short-term stimulus measures.

“We’re already facing the largest budget deficit in our nation’s history. That means we can’t afford to get this wrong.  We need to make some tough choices about where we can and can’t afford to be spending taxpayer money, and I’m not convinced that this package focused enough of its spending on the programs most likely to have a short-term economic impact.”

While the stimulus package does include needed investments in infrastructure and education, the short-term stimulative effect of these projects are watered down by discretionary spending on other programs with less potential for short-term economic impact. Kratovil indicated that he would like to see more of the focus shifted back toward shovel-ready projects most likely to create jobs and improve our transportation, energy, and information technology infrastructure in the short term. Although many of these programs are admirable causes, they certainly are not emergencies and should not be lumped in with legitimate efforts to strengthen our economy and get people back to work.

“Clearly Congress needs to act, but we have to act prudently,” said Kratovil.  “Moving forward, I’m going to work with like-minded colleagues on both sides of the aisle to advocate for more disciplined, focused spending in hopes of producing a better bill during conference with the Senate” said Kratovil.

(Emphasis in original)

Well, given the fact that Frank only had a short amount of time to consider the revised bill you wonder what was added into or subtracted from it for him to change his mind from one passage vote in late January to the next yesterday.

But perhaps a better question is what changed his mind in just a few minutes.

You see, there were a total of five votes yesterday that affected H.R. 1. Two of them were on a resolution to provide consideration to the conference committee report (H. Res. 168) – one ordered the question while the next was to agree to the resolution. Both of those passed despite his objections. (Roll Call #66 and Roll Call #67.)

I can buy that to a certain extent – perhaps Frank wanted more debate and that’s very sensible given the absolute rush job the guy at the top is ordering for this heap of rubbish.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The next three votes (in order) were on the question of consideration of the conference report, on a motion to recommit the conference report with instructions, and for its final passage.

At 11:37 a.m. yesterday, Congressman Kratovil joined 18 other Democrats and all 176 Republicans who voted against consideration (Roll Call #68.) In other words, at that point Frank said no, we should not consider the conference committee report.

Later on, at 2:15 p.m. (presumably after the allowed debate) Kratovil joined 13 other Democrats and 172 of 176 Republicans voting to recommit the report with instructions. I have no idea what the instructions were, but this would have also stopped the bill in its tracks (Roll Call #69).

But just nine minutes later, our freshman Congressman Frank Kratovil confidently stepped up and voted to blow almost 800 billion dollars – if my public school math is right that’s almost $2,700 for every man, woman, and child in America – on a multitude of programs that have little or nothing to do with economic stimulus. On possibly the most appropriate day on the calendar to perpetrate this horror show on the American taxpayer, Friday the 13th, let the record show that Frank Kratovil voted in favor of it (Roll Call #70).

In a normal budget year, that bill is about 1/4 of our annual budget – but I think that’s now gone out the window and the nation which only recently passed the $3 trillion mark in annual expenditures is going to blow past $4 trillion and $5 trillion annually in rapid order.

But let’s look at this as a political matter.

Could it be that this was all calculated in advance by Frank Kratovil?

Anyone with any amount of political savvy knows it’s rare that a major bill such as this is going to pass through both the House and Senate without needing some sort of compromise between the two versions. Indeed, this was the case. We also know that the biggest (and only) hurdle to eventual passage would be to have 2 RINO’s switch sides and defeat any motion to attain cloture for debate in the Senate (preventing a filibuster) – passing the House was a fait accompli.

Frank had to know this too. He also knows he comes from a fairly conservative district and that, by and large, his constituents wouldn’t be completely behind the stimulus package. During his campaign Frank said he didn’t support the bailout – whether he thought it solved the problem is debatable but apparently it hasn’t.

So Frank comes out in January and votes no. First of all, he knows he probably can afford to because the bill will pass anyway. I didn’t see him speaking out in public against it on the evening news or the talk shows, so he wasn’t as rabid an opponent as many Republicans were. But he knew we on the right would give him kudos for doing so, even I did earlier this week.

However, I’m sure there was a large amount of the stimulus bill he favored; he even alluded to it in my quote above. That’s part of the political calculation.

When I called Frank Kratovil’s Washington office before the original vote, the staffer took my name and address, presumably to send me a mailing explaining his decision. I’m sure I’ll get something which explains what changed his mind regarding final passage.

I doubt that the letter will reveal the true meaning, though. Why Frank came back has little to do with the differences between the versions he voted against and voted for. It has more to do with the 2010 campaign and hedging bets.

You see, the stimulus bill has a LOT of different things in it. For example, there are a limited number of tax cuts so Frank can say he supported tax cuts. He can also claim to have supported any particular pork projects which come our way.

On the other hand, Kratovil can also claim that he was a fiscal watchdog and voted against the entire bill for whatever reason he needs to do so, claiming that this issue was eventually “fixed” in conference. Surely he and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee can figure something out – after throwing $2 million into the pot to get him elected, what’s a few thousand more to get the stories straight and believable? They have about 18 months to get it right, plenty of time.

So those of you who have come up to me and told me that they knew Frank Kratovil would be at least somewhat appealing to conservatives, may I say (once again) that I told you how he would be? You spoke too soon, my friends.