Who Is Roy Blunt?

It’s been about a week since Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted in an ethics scandal, and it’s been about two days since Tom DeLay was indicted on ethics charges again. Because the Republican Party was unsuccessful in its bid to change the rules and allow the indicted to serve as its leaders, Tom DeLay has been forced to resign as House Majority Leader, and he’s been replaced as Majority Leader by Roy Blunt.

In the meantime, a succession of pageantry-filled events arranged by the Bush administration have pushed the issue of Roy Blunt’s newfound power off stage. No matter what the political stagehands say, however, the question needs to be asked: Who is Roy Blunt?

Since the 2004 elections, we’ve been keeping close track of the behavior of members of Congress, which means that we have a ready dossier of Roy Blunt’s recent activity. What’s he been up to? Equally important, what hasn’t he been up to?

Roy Blunt: A Long List of Inaction When Action Was Called For, in 2005 Alone

By our reckoning, Roy Blunt has not done a single thing in the current session of Congress that could be called even vaguely liberal. An accounting of Representative Blunt’s failure to act when necessary include the following:

• By voting “no” on the Farr Amendment, Roy Blunt voted to keep Section 102 in H.R. 418, giving a Bush administration bureaucrat the ability to nullify any law without judicial review of that decision. Where we come from, they call that dictatorship.

• By voting “no” on the Scott Amendment, Rep. Blunt voted to keep language in H.R. 27 allowing organizations to engage in government-funded religious discrimination in hiring. We had thought that bigotry was old hat, and that the separation of church and state was secure. With this vote, Rep. Blunt helped to weaken the constitution and bring bigotry back in style.
• Roy Blunt has failed to support H.R. 2412, which would provide more information to the public about contacts between lobbyists and politicians, and which would slow down the revolving door of politics in which politicians move into cushy corporate jobs after they retire in exchange for favors. What is Representative Blunt’s problem with ethics?
• It is unfortunately unsurprising that Republican Majority Leader Blunt has failed to support H.R. 40, which would acknowledge the injustices of slavery and racial discrimination and establish a commission to study them.
• Rep Blunt has not yet cosponsored H.R. 63, which would make Election Day a federal holiday to make it easier to get out and vote.
• Rep Blunt has failed to support H.R. 759, which would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through market-based systems.
• Rep. Blunt has failed to support H.R. 550, which would sensibly require the establishment of a backup paper record of votes for those times when electronic voting machines fail. Why is Rep. Blunt unwilling to protect the bedrock of democracy, Americans’ faith that every vote counts?
• Rep. Blunt has failed to support H.R. 952, which would put an end to the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which Bush Administration officials send people into the custody of certain nations, knowing full well (some would say intending) that they will be tortured there. Extraordinary rendition is another stain on the moral clarity of the United States. It is a horrible irony that in a “War on Terror,” the United States government would enable the use of terror as a tool. Why is Roy Blunt unwilling to stand against American complicity in the use of torture?
• Roy Blunt has failed to support H.R. 1157, which would keep government agents from riffling through your bookstore receipts and library records without your permission or knowledge. Why is Rep. Blunt standing against privacy, against individual liberty, and with Big Brother? That’s not a rhetorical question.
• Roy Blunt has failed to support H.R. 1440, which would keep members of the Federal Communication Commission from using their appointed positions to censor cable, satellite or internet programs they consider to be indecent. These “narrowcast” programs are accessed only by those who specifically request them, so why should the government make it their business to keep people from seeing what they want to see? Why has Rep Blunt not cosponsored this sensible, freedom-defending bill?
• We may think we live in modern times, but the U.S. Constitution still does not guarantee that individual rights shall apply equally to men and women. Without such a constitutional guarantee, all it could take is a rogue judge or an emboldened conservative Congress to take women’s rights away by a simple majority vote. On the other hand, this nation is still encumbered with unfair legal notions that, all other things being equal, give mothers custody advantages over fathers. The current state of unequal protection is unfair to both women and men, and devalues our common underlying humanity.

  Roy Blunt has not cosponsored H.J. Res 37, which would amend the United States Constitution to simply state the following: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.” It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s about time something was done to enshrine this principle in the Constitution for men and women alike.

• Finally, Roy Blunt failed to support H.R. 567, which would have preserved and protected the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from short-sighted, unnecessary development.

Roy Blunt: Wrong-headed, Cold-hearted Actions in 2005

Representative Roy Blunt is not just a paragon of inappropriate inaction. Just this year alone, Blunt repeatedly showed his bonafies as a regressive, destructive, wrong-headed and cold-hearted paragon of congressional Republicanism:

• To members of Congress, talk of patriotism comes easy. But what about action to preserve what is great about America? What about protecting the symbol of America, the bald eagle itself? On September 29, 2005, a slim majority of member of the United States House of Representatives voted for H.R. 3824, an attack upon the landmark law that brought the American bald eagle back from the brink of extinction. Without the Endangered Species Act, the American bald eagle would probably not exist any more, except on the backs of our quarters and as a graphic on Republican web sites promoting corporate pollution.

  We’ve seen the American bald eagle fly, and we think that it is worth protecting. 229 members of the House of Representatives disagreed. They voted to seriously weaken the protection of endangered species like the American bald eagle. They did it for the sake of profits for big business. A NO vote would have represented a courageous stand for the Endangered Species Act. In a telling betrayal, Representative Blunt voted YES for the gutting of the Endangered Species Act. For shame.

• By voting for the Hostettler Amendment to H.R. 2862, Rep. Blunt voted to keep a ruling of a federal court from being enforced. Why? Because a judge decided that a religious monument on the grounds of the Gibson county courthouse was an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion over others. Rep. Blunt has apparently decided that any personally distasteful court ruling can be overturned, just because. That’s not the rule of law. That’s an arbitrary violation of the separation of powers. And, in this case, it allows pushy and vocal religious groups to shove their beliefs down everybody else’s throats. That’s not just wrong, it is downright unAmerican.
• One of the more purely nationalist pieces of legislation to enter the U.S. Congress so far this year is House Joint Resolution 10, which would amend the United States Constitution so that “The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.”

  The amendment would transform the American flag from a symbol of liberty into a nationalist idol to be worshipped in the cult of the Homeland. Just consider the language used in the amendment. The amendment proposes to prohibit the “physical desecration” of the American flag. Let’s be clear: to desecrate something means to demean its sacred status.

  Sacred status? Sacred? In traditional American democracy, the American flag is not sacred. There is no official cult of flag worship. Flag worshipping cults, like the Boy Scouts, have been private organizations. However, this amendment would elevate a physical object, the American flag, into a special religious realm of untouchability and spiritual transcendence. The amendment would insert the notion of sacred idols into the United States Constitution for the first time.

  In supporting House Joint Resolution 10, Representative Blunt stands against good sense and with the nationalist mob. We need fewer, not more, demagogues like Blunt in the Congress.

• At a time when our budget deficit is soaring, George W. Bush and the Congress should be finding ways for the American people to fulfill their responsibilities to future generations. That means that we must pay our way: when Bush and the Congress propose and pass large budgets, they must provide for their payment as well. Yes, this means taxes. But while the Republican-controlled Congress is allowing the government’s budget to spiral wildly higher, it irresponsibly suggests that we ought to cut taxes. And to make matters worse, the taxes they propose to cut are taxes paid by those who can by definition afford to pay them: the wealthy. Nobody has to pay a penny for anything up to a million dollars they get in income when a relative dies. But H.R. 8 would permanently eliminate income taxes on any unearned money over a million bucks that people receive as part of an inheritance. You and I won’t get that kind of inheritance: it’s the already filthy rich who will benefit. At this time of budget deficits, we shouldn’t be cutting away these sorts of taxes. It’s not fiscally prudent. It’s radically regressive. By supporting this legislation, Republican Majority Leader Roy Blunt has decided to act in an irresponsible manner that is fiscally dangerous to us all.

Roy Blunt’s record is all too clear: anti-liberty, anti-progress, anti-environment, anti-prudence, anti-equality, pro-secrecy, pro-corruption, pro-autocracy, pro-irresponsibility.

The Republican Party may be morally bankrupt, but it’s not blind: Republican politicians know exactly what sort agenda Roy Blunt is pushing. Knowing this, they actively chose Roy Blunt to direct them as their Majority Leader. The agenda of Roy Blunt is the agenda of the Republican Party. If the Blunt agenda is not your agenda, then isn’t it time to stop voting Republican?